Towering Inferno

Zacks.com mailed its recommendation of BUY Tower Semiconductors with a reminder that Tower was located in Israel, and therefore, by definition, a most risky investment. Who the hell is Zacks? Leonard Zacks says he has a PhD in mathematics and thinks he can find patterns in stock market data that lead to superior investment results. Must be another Russian Jewboy who lost his way to Eretz Israel.

Tower Semiconductor (Nasdaq: TSEM), he writes, is a pure-play semiconductor wafer foundry with two IC plants in Israel that manufacture embedded flash-based memory, analog/mixed-signal, and CMOS image-sensor devices. September quarter top and bottom-line were in-line with consensus estimates. The forward guidance is for a 3-11% increase. TSEM appears to be hitting its stride as the company decreased the cash burn rate and completed a restructuring. Tower can expand from here, and increase sales by 58% in 2007. Then Zacks reminds his readers that Tower is located in Israel, a most dangerous place. Risky, risky, crazily risky to invest in anything remotely linked to Israel. True, I too had strong difficulty to understand how perfectly normal people was ready to risk their dear lives to visit Israel, not to speak of those living here. After finishing a whole bottle of taxfree whiskey, on August 1976 I took courage and landed in Tel Aviv. As the alcohol vapours evaporated, I was surprised how healthy the people of Tel Aviv looked. They walked purposefully on the streets and others were sitting on seaside coffeehouses chatting seemingly free of all worries. On Allenby street (all the while looking fearfully for falling bombs and Arab fedayeen) I wandered into an air conditioned Viennese "konditoria" with sweet cream things, and subsequently, I continued filling up in the next door Hungarian restaurant. After a while I couldnt keep the truth hidden from myself anymore: The food was good. Tel Aviv seemed to be chock-full of Hungarians who tried to fool each other that they actually spoke biblical Hebrew and that their name was Avigdor Bar Hai or Achitzedef Ben Yizkiyahu, and not Zimmermann Gyuri. Crazy, but I felt rather at home in this mortally dangerous place. I mean, me cago en las amenazas de Zacks, Tower seems to be a good investment.