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

To: ILCUL8R who wrote (28752)	3/3/1999 12:16:00 AM
From: Paul V.	Respond to of 70976

Richard, Those smarter than me bought a bunch at 26 or 27 (Paul V.) and some others, smarter than many of us, recently sold at 70. I did NOT sell at $70. Yes, I did buy numerous shares at $26.5. My absolute high target standard deviation price is $101.50. Still holding. I am in the 20% capital gain range so I can sell anytime but plan to follow the statistics, DW charts and Tito's, Lester E's and Gottfried's BTB charts. The BTB, Orders, and shipment charts are, IMO, the best indication of AMAT's future potential. Just my opinions. Paul

To: ILCUL8R who wrote (28752)	3/3/1999 12:21:00 AM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

Richard, re >The question is, where do we go from here?< The one 'indicator' I look at the most is monthly SEMI orders. geocities.com:80/WallStreet/5464/ord_prce.gif In the past AMAT has tracked them well, but recently the stock price has gone ahead of orders. The correction we had is not reflected in my chart yet. [that would be the price at the end of February, $55.625]. Monthly prices can be found on Yahoo... chart.yahoo.com Peak orders in '97 were near $1.8B, but January '99 orders of less than $1B were reported. I believe we are in the upleg of a cycle and have a ways to go. In '97 the price started to drop rapidly BEFORE orders peaked. So watching orders peak will get you out well after the price peak. I don't know of a way to anticipate the orders peak. But I'm convinced there are investors who are privvy to monthly orders before SEMI publishes them. So it seems that setting a stop loss sell order below the current price is the only way to keep most of your gains. Of course it might also whipsaw you. Brian's argument that we will see the mother of all cycles is persuasive, but speculative. We had so many predictions here - by sincere and smart people - and most turned out to be wrong. So I try to go by what happens - not by what should happen. Nevertheless, those with faith may still turn out to be correct. I'm not buying more AMAT here. Gottfried

To: ILCUL8R who wrote (28752)	3/3/1999 1:33:00 AM
From: Jeffrey D	Respond to of 70976

Richard, thank you for your honest post. It strikes close to home for many of us with similar experiences. All I can say is that last week The Wall Street Journal gave a grade to the stock appreciation of the 1000 largest companies in America for the last 5 and 10 years. Despite the cyclical nature of AMAT's business it earned an "A" grade for both time periods. If you are a trader I would think AMAT would drive you crazy. If you have a longer time horizon then I think you will be quite happy in holding AMAT at 38 or 59. Jeff