TJ - John Joseph ...
Got bumped upstairs (Director of U.S. Equity Research now) and was replaced by Glen Yeung. Joseph was reasonably knowledgeable, but was consistently wrong through this past cycle, and went through several embarrassing (and for the people who listened to him, brutally costly) flip-flops.
He attempted to get cute and get the jump on the competition by calling a bottom and turn with a huge buy call on the entire semi and equipment sectors in April '01, only to turn around and reverse field later that year when semis cratered in the fall, calling for an exodus at just about the time the sector turned around and went up, then he reversed course again and called recovery once more in early '02, only to get followers whipsawed and smashed by the brutal decline from March to October '02. It was the ultimate buy high, sell low travishamockery. :-)
The guy most worth listening to in those sectors -- head and shoulders above the rest -- was Dan Niles, but unfortunately for retail investors, he left to run his own hedge fund. He and Joseph wound up going at each other a couple times with their calls. Niles was/is tough to the core, extremely confident, and possessing of a pretty sharp tongue. He called Joseph out (not by name, but making reference to his calls) publicly, particularly when he made his infamous April '01 cycle turn / buy 'em with both fists call. Niles just roasted him and almost derisively mocked his call.
Several little penguins followed in Joseph's footsteps, ever fearful of missing the party, and Niles stuck to his guns, taking great amounts of crap from the sell-side and from the ever-promotional t.v. interviewers and commentators. For another 18 months he was heavily bearish on tech generally, and by far the best performance of the sell-side guys.
Late summer 2002 Niles had one of the best turn calls I've ever seen. Finally as all the sell-siders had capitulated and gone negative after getting their retail investors killed for the better part of 3 years, Niles went positive. He called up on HPQ. Naturally then, everyone was as gloomy as could be and they all sent cat-calls his way. He stuck to his guns and talked about a full industry cycle turn for all tech. He was basically all by himself. When semis took a hiccup turn down during the holiday season and into January '03, most of the rest of the sell-siders ran for cover, fearing the rally off the Oct '02 lows was just a fakeout rally preceding a resumption of the "bear". Niles stuck to his guns and in the process finally gained the recognition he should have gotten years earlier. He also got to run off with a lot of other people's money and launch his own fund. :-)
Bottom line - I'm not sure I'd be putting a lot of credence in SSB on semis.
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