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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (23613)	8/30/1998 5:45:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Katherine, Re: Any thoughts from the TA types. The Toronto Star technical analyst had a column today essentially saying, "If you're still in, you may as well stay invested. There's not much downside left and there's lots of upside coming." Article (minus the charts from the print edition) is at: thestar.com The problem I find with Technical Analysis and Analysts is that when asked What would change their mind?, they often answer with words to the effect that "After I've been proven wrong by the chart results, then I'll change my prediction." For people planning to retire in 10 years, or to live more than 10 years whether retired or not, historically there hasn't been a better place to put one's money than the market. (S&P 500, e.g.) I believe that more people are better informed than ever before. Hopefully, this will allow many of them to make appropriate decisions. Ian.

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (23613)	8/30/1998 6:00:00 PM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Katherine/all, the semi equipment orders/shipments graph has been posted at geocities.com I got all the data from dom.semi.org From the July press release I took the May data, from the June release the April data etc. Reason is that it takes SEMI two months to call it "final" data. Raw data is shown below... GM Total orders semi equip in $million updated 8/30/98 orders ship btb 1996 JAN FEB 1687 1243 1.36 MAR 1447 1256 1.15 APR 1361 1354 1.01 MAY 1187 1366 0.87 JUN 1175 1354 0.87 JUL 992 1311 0.76 AUG 882 1248 0.71 SEP 778 1119 0.70 OCT 833 1072 0.78 NOV 952 1062 0.90 DEC 1078 1069 1.01 1997 JAN 1116 1034 1.08 FEB 1101 1029 1.07 MAR 1265 1102 1.15 APR 1386 1261 1.10 MAY 1421 1299 1.09 JUN 1474 1375 1.07 JUL 1659 1476 1.12 AUG 1688 1536 1.10 SEP 1774 1672 1.06 OCT 1835 1793 1.02 NOV 1599 1598 1.00 DEC 1550 1559 0.99 1998 JAN 1363 1458 0.93 FEB 1233 1369 0.90 MAR 1123 1370 0.82 APR 1102 1416 0.78 MAY 1107 1361 0.81 JUNE 933 1235 0.76 JULY 757 1105 0.69

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (23613)	8/30/1998 7:09:00 PM
From: Gottfried	Respond to of 70976

Kathrin, [edited] you said >the people due to retire in 10 years who convinced themselves that the market is just as safe as a bank, with more than double the return, will be dropping like flies.< I doubt there too many of those, since investors are learning faster these days. As for TA analysis of the market: have you seen the Barron's article? Very bearish TA. On the other hand, the celebrity analysts seem to agree we're close to the bottom and will then rise again. As for me - I just worry and don't know. I'm not buying for a spell. Here are the analysts... interactive.wsj.com ...and the TA artists interactive.wsj.com GM

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (23613)	8/30/1998 8:00:00 PM
From: Gary Burton	Respond to of 70976

Katherine---mkt will close up on the day with more gains on Tues. But mkt will then top out---below 8328--- and head down again to below any low put in Mon a.m. The rally will not be worth playing on Mon/Tues in most cases. Amat may hold above 26 on Mon am and then head towards 30ish if it does so. Any rally into the 29-32 area should be the last uptick before breaking last year's low of 25.50 on the way to 20ish.------KLAC must take out its 24.50 low so any rally Mon/Tues won't hold.------Big picture---Watch Brazil in Sept/Oct for potential futhur big decline setting off a big drop in the US. Brazil has to roll over megadebts in Sept/Oct .----If DJ breaks 7700. it has the potential to go much lower soon. If it holds 7700 on the next material drop from sub-8328 (after any low on Mon), then the bulls have a chance for a more meaningful rally. Most semiequip stoclks need to print furthur lows from last week's low so Mon tues rally if any should abort

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (23613)	8/31/1998 2:05:00 AM
From: KLINVESTOR	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

I follow this Board and few of the other semi-equips regularily although I generally only post on Cohu's Board. What has surprised me over the past couple months is how little attention has been paid to the positive DRAM pricing action that has been occurring. Only a few comments have been made on the various Boards. Montgomery Securities posts a weekly DRAM and Microprocessor Pricing Update for their clients and for the last couple of months the pricing action has been extremely positive. As an example, this week (August 28) they point out that in the past six weeks 16 Mb PC-66 prices have risen 38% and 64Mb PC-66 prices are up 22%. While I recognize the Koreans have shut downs fabs for a week a month and Siemens closed a small UK Fab I am surprised that this strengthening DRAM market has not garnered more attention. Is that because pessimism is currently so pervasive that signs of good news are being overlooked? NT 5.0 is to be released mid-year 1999 and the majority of computer purchases are still corporate purchases and the recommended DRAM configuration for NT 5.0 is a minimum 128 MB. Since most corporate I.T. managers typically start incorporating configurations in their base system requirements for new PCs based upon anticipated application utilized it would seem like we would be looking at a further ramp-up in the base DRAM requirements over the next few couple of quarters. I keep reading postings about how much excess DRAM capacity there is and I am sure there is some truth but I can't believe that it is as large as most believe if DRAM prices have jumped as much as they have recently. The first half of 1998 was terrible for DRAM pricing for a variety of reasons including the need to work off excess PC inventories, excess DRAM inventories at manufacturers, continued acceleration in the Build to Order PC market thus reducing the inventorys maintained by PC makers, and of course the excess capacity that came on stream during 1997. It appears that the inventory issues have been worked out and now it is just a matter of time before the increasing demand catches up with the supply side. I am hopeful that we are a lot closer to that event than most believe based upon the what has occurred with recent DRAM pricing increases. Time will tell. Are there any others out there that put any significance in this DRAM pricing action? My focus on DRAM pricing is because this should be an early indicator of a turnaround in equipment orders. My other question relates to market prices variances between the large cap semi-equips and the small cap semi-equip stocks. While AMAT is a premier company and I am very bullish on the sector long-term I have a hard to rationalizing why to buy a large cap stock like AMAT which will be at a break-even earnings level soon while still trading at relatively high trailing PE,PSR, and PB ratios compared to other smaller cap stocks now. Cohu the largest domestic test handling company as example, and there are others, but Cohu trades at less than a 1 PSR ratio, at about 6 on a trailing PE, and something like 1.2 PB (No debt and Working Capital equals roughly 50-60% of market value). AMAT and some of the other large cap semi-equips trade at ratios of 2-3 times this. This is fairly typical of the market today since the Russell 2000 has done so poorly but it would seem that the sophisticated investors looking for opportunities in this sector right now would be focusing on the small stocks that have a strong position in their particular niche. Having said that, I really appreciate following the comments on the AMAT Board here because there is such a wide range of opinions and so much good information exchanged. Good luck to all.