Just read the thread, and wanted to comment on the many excellent posts. I bought the book 3 months ago, said to myself "I am doing this, but they articulate it better!" I have been investing using their guidance since then, and have both made and lost money doing it,and have refined it for my use. The first thing I did was make Cisco my # 1 holding, and boy, am I glad I did.
The next thing I did was buy a "basket" of potential gorillas, such as Vantive, Managuistics, Seibel, etc, and learned the they may be a "value" buy, and long term may become gorillas, but short term, I took a bath, because the market is not rewarding performance by these small cap software companies, and when they miss their numbers, the stocks are so thinly traded that they really dive.
In the meantime, I tracked down SAP, and made it my number two holding.
After looking at performance, and thinking back over my investment experience. I decided that the path would make the most money at was to stay with large cap gorillas and kings, and move between them according to the momentum in the stock. Short term, this has been a very successful approach.
I think the "basket" approach is too conservative for the people on this board, most of us will buy the likely leader,like Seibel and move if the stock slows down. My reading of the book says that AOL, Dell, and Lucent are Kings, not gorillas, because of low switching costs and no proprietary technology, but that they act like gorillas, due to size, and management's ability to seize the market, and they are my# 3 & 4 & 5 holdings right now.
I look forward to discussing these points with all of you. Have a profitable weekend! |
