Moon Kil Woong

Applied Materials: Plans for Layoffs, Cautious Outlook on Solar

AMAT's news is not inspiring for semis. BAC's downgrade of the semi industry is prescient and correct. Cap-Ex spending buy businesses is not resurgent (how can it be with continued layoffs) and aside from netbooks growing by leaps and bounds the computer market is not as lusterous as one might imagine after hearing Intel's pep rally.

Congrats to an insigtful analyst for once. Although he may be playing the end of the holiday season ramp that winds up by the beginning of November, I think he is on to something.

As for the broader market, William is right, sectoral fundamentals mean little in this bubble rally. All that really matters is if the government and Fed keep pouring hundreds of billions in the market and devaluing the dollar. Nothing can countermand such strong bubble mechanics save inflation (signalling the fact it all must end soon) and/or a refusal by anyone to buy dollars or US Treasuries.

Short Interest on Nasdaq: Why the Data Delay?

All brokerages... errmmm I mean banks now... know the total short interest positions of their firm and clients by neccesity. The larger you are the better your information. Gee why don't you trust that Goldman Sacs won't use this information for its own benefit?

And even if you don't trust that they won't use the information for their own gain, the SEC has not determined that it should be illegal. So accordingly everything is perfectly fine, right? Of course, the SEC hasn't really determined anything should be illegal except when they demand firms pay some penalty without admitting guilt every once and a while. Even when they do this, they tend not to ever make substantive remedies for it. I assume they do this so they can bilk them again whenever they're in need of money. Anyway the charges are usually nothing big like censoring traders for cheating their customers and what not. Like anyone cares about little fish anyway.

So yes, Kirk Lindstrom has a point. Cynicysm pays even if there isn't a whole lot you can do about it. A critical mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Surviving Semi Downturn: Five Stocks That Will Thrive After 2009, Part II

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. About Qualcomm, perhaps he sees it as a bloated firm run by a bunch of attorneys peddling a technology no one would cry for if it dissapeared off the face of the earth tomorrow. Or perhaps he likes it's balance sheet and current revenues despite having to wage legal warfare every day of its existence and beg the government to try to strong arm other countries into adopting their technology. Either way, it's the author's choice. He already listed over 10 fine companies. Need he list 100?

I don't own Qualcomm nor short it nor do I own any of these companies at this point in time. I owned XLNX, AMAT, LLTC, TXN, LSCC, and ALTR before but now am not long or short them.

Will Capacity Utilization Tell Us the Recession Is Over?

With more and more of the economy in the services side utlilzation means much much less there days. Unemployment and wages are a much better indicator. With wages falling and the hours of work dropping the unemployment picture looks a lot more dour than just looking at how many jobs were lost each month.

As wrixon points out both capacity and the number of employed are dropping making the same numbers worse than previous. 500k people losing their jobs is much worse now that there are already about 5 million jobs lost. Likewise 40% utilization is much worse if 10% of all factories are already retired.

I am not convinced we are seeing the bottom yet. Perhapse in Q4. And even then, there is no guarantee things won't slip back down after the holiday season and with higher inflation on the horizon. Thus my thinking moves at earliest to 2010 not 2009 for a solid verifyable bottom.

Semi Shortage: Why I'm Waiting It Out

Hmmm semi's have been burning their Capex cash and killing expansions and upgrades. This is not a sign of health. But at least they were smart and raised cash when the going was good. The bad fact about this is none of them are going under so the ones remaining can feast on their carcasses like the previous downturns.

As for AMAT, it is still too overpriced due to it's solar play which is such a tiny fraction of it's business it's laughable. If solar will bail them out, then that means the semi equipment market has ceased to exist.

U.S. Rejects Nationalization of Citi and BAC

Well something needs to be done with these lemons. Personally, bankruptcy seems like the most justifiable even if we have to eat the loss. It looks like the taxpayers gonna eat the loss anyway even if it doesn't go into bankruptcy.

As for BAC, you can say your profitable or whatever you want with current banking rules since you can hide derivatives losses, etc. Cash flow is still proving that BAC is not healthy and keeps needing mass reserve injections far exceeding any "profit" to stem the tide of losses.