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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin who wrote (4741)	10/16/1998 11:07:00 AM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Kevin, this group is down for a reason and historically, none of these companies are good investments for long term holding. Assuming you are looking for short term goals of less than 6 months, maybe you could do well buying dips and taking profits when they come. I think SEG is not providing reason to buy. Komag and APM are in a death struggle. High risk investing if that's what you like. Quantum has also disappointed. They have a good thing going with Tape, but it's not doing as well as in the past. Drives are loosing money. Maybe it's below where it should be, but for a company that can't make a profit, what's the point in investing. They aren't willing to take the hard decisions and get out of money loosing business like making heads internally and competing on the high end. Maybe they are worth more based on something other than earnings like PSR, or whatever, but it's not such a compelling reason to buy as a Cisco or Microsoft, or Oracle. You say you like the trends in data warehousing. Why not buy into that? These guys are beating the drives out of margin and pocketing the profits, just as the PC makers are doing. Drives are in over capacity and despite their amazing complexity, they are a commodity. This is not changing. I have made recent investments in RDRT hoping for a turn around based on their GMR technology, but it's very risky. I've also bought Hutchinson (HTCH) based on the success of their valued added suspensions. TSA, as they call it, is on everybodies wish list, but HTCH hasn't been able to get the production going. I believe they have turned the corner and will make money next quarter. In the end, perhaps the best buy is in other areas where they have solid earnings growth. Most of us are just addicted to this group but wouldn't really call any stock in the group a 2 bagger let alone a 10 bagger. In the end, that's the goal, to find really great long term investments. Regards, Mark