David Braverman Quotations

Semiconductors seem to have bottomed finally. It looks like you know we've passed the worst. Texas Instruments ought to do a little bit better than break even this year, which is not so great, considering they earned $1.73 on the year-ago. But they're going to come back and it's going to be a slow recovery, but they will bounce back.

But they are a big deal when you start to think who they are selling to -- biotech companies.

Whatever volatility we've seen today can be attributed to oil.

It could mean a substantial reduction of global trade. That could lead to new energy shortages and affect a wide variety of imports and exports, particularly manufactured goods from the Pacific Basin.

It could mean a substantial reduction of global trade, ... That could lead to new energy shortages and affect a wide variety of imports and exports, particularly manufactured goods from the Pacific Basin.

I think the market ought to be satisfied with the idea that at least there's not going to be anymore tightening. You know, it's only a couple months ago that people were saying the Fed was going to tighten all through the fall. So now that it looks like they're not, people are saying, wow, maybe they'll ease now. But I think that is quite a way off, probably some time next year.

I think by the time we get to the fourth quarter and next year, things are going to get a lot better.

I think there's a little bit of negative sentiment in the market. Back-to-school sales at retailers were not especially great, and that put a little damper on things. People start focusing on valuations, which is an old story. But valuations are still, you know, pretty high,

I think stock selection is going to be key. It's just like last year, where if you picked a stock at random, you probably lost money even though the averages were up. And stock selection's going to be key again. You have to pick stocks that are going to have earnings that exceed the consensus. It sounds very simple but it's not the easiest thing in the world to do.

When you have a down market they tend not to do poorly.

The second piece is the volume, (which tells you) how many shares were actually part of this trade. The third part is the price at which the trade was transacted.

They're pricey, but on the other hand, that's where you're going to get the good growth and good earnings.

The warehouse club concept seems to be fairly transportable, ... They're even going to build a warehouse in Taipei. They're now going to provide Internet service in conjunction with Microsoft at $11.99 a month. All of that keeps Costco's membership fairly stable and keeps their renewal rates very high.

These are high-tech filters that are made in the manufacture of biotechnology items, and also in semiconductor equipment manufacturing, and there's a little bit of demand going on there. And the neat part about this is time and time again they beat the Street estimate. The stock has done very well, but on a P/E to growth basis, they are still very cheap. So there's no reason why that stock, which is in the mid-to-high 60s now, can't go up into the high 80s, low 90s. Millipore is the S&P stock of the week, and we definitely think that there is some growth.

Analog Devices makes digital chips that go into cell phones, and there's nothing more hot than that at the moment - you've got cellular phones, which, obviously the world wants to own, plus you've got the chips that go into these phones. These are really the places to be right now.

The markets will be relieved once we know the winner. It's more important that there's a clear winner than who wins.