Hi David,
Welcome to the thread.
I'm not the best but I'll offer my opinion for what it's worth.
On trading: Trading is a full time job. Some of the thing you have to have are; real time tick by tick quotes, good resources for news and charts, cheep commission, lots of money, and the ability to make very hard decisions FAST. I would highly recommend to anyone thinking about trading, to do it on paper for six months before opening a brokerage account. It takes at least that long to get a feel for which way the frog is going to jump. Trading is not "a" plan, but a whole list of plans ready to execute on short notice.
I have a fairly high opinion of averaging down. If done at the right time you can bring your average price per share more in line with current market conditions. For example if you bought 2 shares at 12 and buy 1 more at 9 your average cost is now 11 so you break even sooner. I also have an equally high opinion of averaging up, that is selling the extra share at break even or at least at a profit.
Sometimes taking a loss to invest in a better performing stock is the best way to go, BUT, you haven't lost money on the stock market UNTIL you sell at a loss. I personally consider taking a loss to be the last resort and do it only to protect my investment capitol in cases where time is a major issue. IMO the best time to fix a mistake is 5 minutes after you make it. Your broker doesn't care if you sell something you just bought or buy something you just sold. It's your money and extra commission for him.
Personally, I'm waiting for next months earnings announcement before doing much of anything with NOVL. I'm hoping for, and expecting easy choices but am prepared to make some hard choices if things don't go my way.
I couldn't even begin to guess how many hours of research and number crunching I've done to come up with what I consider to be a reasonable projection for Q4 revenues. While I'm prepared to be wrong, I believe actual EPS for this quarter will blow the consensus estimate of .01 out of the water. The company has repeatedly stated that revenue has been flat for some time. According to investor relations actual sell through for Q2 97 was about $30 million more than reported revenue because of inventory reductions. The company has also stated that expenses should be about $25 million less than Q2 97. Going over the last 5 quarters the numbers come in dead on at $300 million which is consistant with $273 million plus $30 million for Q2. You may however wish to get some input from some of the folks that have been invested in NOVL a lot longer than I have to get some pointers on how easy it is for Novell to screw up earnings.
My opinions are my own and subject to change without notice.
Regards,
Don |
