For those who might be interested, I have talked with most of my sources (just a handful of folks who work in the sector) over the past few days, and the gist is not good. I gather that the first half of the quarter was ok, and better than expected in some areas, but business slowed sharply the last month or so. Putting everything together and trying to make some sense of what I am hearing, the best answer came from one source who said that there was a decent run of orders for chipmakers early in the quarter to build inventory in case there were disruptions due to the war and possible terrorism, and that was the source of the good first half of the quarter.
The disruptions never occurred, of course, and the war is about over so the order rate has since fallen off drastically and now the problem is very high inventories almost across the board for component parts due to very slow end demand. That will make for a very poor second quarter and probably the third quarter as well, so look for a lot of lowered guidance if they are honest when reporting over the next few weeks (that may be a big "if"), and then look for warnings during the quarter.
All of the above is dependent on how good my sources are, but they have proven quite good over the past few years. One caveat is that I have not heard from one of them who is very good on the equipment area, but the last time I talked with him a few weeks ago he indicated that things were showing no signs of improvement at all, and if anything there was further deterioration as plans are put off or cancelled altogether.
My conclusion (which is exactly what my macro outlook has been projecting) is that the economy is still slowing steadily and there will be no second half recovery again this year. Indeed, things will continue to get worse, not better.
Still quite bearish here but just my opinion.
mlsoft
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
