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Technology Stocks : Semtech (Nasdaq:SMTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Leeza Rodriguez who wrote (626)	10/30/1998 8:42:00 PM
From: Kelvin Taylor	Respond to of 1225

Leeza, Looking at the month of October, there has definitely an increase not only in volume but price. SMTC gained 34% for October and the average daily volume nearly doubled from that of the beginning of the month. My guess is the buying support has increased, as confidence in the sector (recent upgrades, growth in earnings, etc.) has become more widespread. After a huge oversold condition the last two months, semis were just due for some upside. I think investors are expecting good numbers in November and have decided to buy now. It will be an interesting next 3 weeks. Have a good weekend everybody. :o) Kelvin

To: Leeza Rodriguez who wrote (626)	10/30/1998 10:08:00 PM
From: Jeff Bond	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1225

One statistic that individual investors would greatly benefit from is constantly updated institutional sponsorship figures. It would allow us to see when they begin acquiring a position, and also tip us off the moment they begin to bail out from one they currently hold. Here's a chart that sheds quite a bit of light on the matter. In the absense of concrete data, we can only interpret the data to the best of out abilities. Here's what I noticed in today's intraday chart: bigcharts.com 1. The price opened up above the prior days close, and quickly advanced to well past $24. This action conjurs up images of people climbing all over each other, racing to get the goodies before they are all gone. Conclusion : INSTITUTIONS. 2. A HUGE volume spike occurred in the last 15 minutes of trading, it must have been at least a quarter of the days total volume. These end of day trades usually indicate that whoever is doing the buying doesn't want to tip their hand, so they wait until the end of the day to make their move. This is especially true on Friday, when no one can sneak in early the next morning and mimic their action. Um, Leesa that wasn't me LOL :o) Conclusion : INSTITUTIONS. 3. That huge end of day action reversed a slow decline in price that had been occurring since early morning trading. This suggests that price was not as much of an issue to whoever was buying as was simply obtaining the shares. Individual investors tend to buy shares in more uniform fashion, typically spread throughout the day. Huge spikes typically are block trades either between institutions, or institutions obtaining as many shares as individual investors are willing to cough up. Pre-programmed computer trading typically appears in a very well defined curve pattern, many times a normal curve that spans a period of approximately 1-2 hours. On October 15th I noted exactly this type of pattern. Conclusion : INSTITUTIONS Message 6023359 4. SMTC was downgraded by at least one analyst after the company took that one-time charge to restructure manufacturing facilities. The charge didn't do much to pretty up earnings, so despite being able to make a profit in spite of the charge, the downgrade triggered a significant drop in share price. I have been a little mean spirited towards a few institutions that were inconsistent in their rating of SMTC. Particularly I spanked Greenville for being the dumper that started a huge case of distribution back in October of 1997 (but gave them credit for good foresight), and I also hosed BA Robert Stephenson for changing their rating on SMTC about once a month earlier this year. I WILL be watching the institutional sponsorship figures, checking the 8K filings, and checking whether our analysts have been accumulating shares in a company they downgraded. It's too early to determine if this is the case, but if it does turn out to be the case, I'll shout it out as loud as I can, over and over and over. Conclusion : INSTITUTIONS Message 5749293 There really is only one other plausibe explanation, and that is that the company itself saw the incredible value and decided to capitalize on the opportunity. I don't know if they are required to report such action prior to doing so, but it would have been a great investment for the cash on hand SMTC had earlier. I suspect the institutional runup game has begun in earnest, excellent PC sales, prospects of Acapella products coming on line, more design wins secured, effect of restructuring beginning to improve margins, etc. I looked way back, and as funny as it seemed only a month ago, Todd considered it realistic to be at $35 by years end. It was funny, and it still is funny, but I think I might just go with that number as my year end figure too :o) See ya Leeza, JB