I started reading this thread yesterday as I am a new subscriber to
Cabot Market Letter and got my first issue yesterday. I got so excited on
reading about Presstek that I decided I would buy it today and just thought I'd check out
this newsgroup first. And thank God I did. I also called the Cabot hotline
and heard the recommendation to buy. Just recently I burnt my fingers
really badly in a stock called IDID which went up 16-fold in two days.
I didn't sell at its high, or even after it fell 50%, when I would
still have made a good profit.That is a decision I'll always regret.
The stock was frozen two days later. There was an SEC investigation and the
company has since been delisted from NASD and SEC is suing them. Till I learnt
this lesson, my nature was to look only for the positive news and to kinda
not pay too much attention to the negative. If I had seen PRST before the
IDID episode, I would have jumped into it before market today, especially with the
positive remarks abouut the company in Cabot's letter. I would certainly have like d
to get in on the Stock of the decade, The company has all eight factors listed
in Cabot's letter-great products, patents, management, no debt, etc. But
in reading John Tookers's posts, I restrained myself, which is very much unlike
me. I saw a factor in PRST which I shall call the "Other Factor"-what if
PRSTs technolgy isn't going to be the technolgy of the future ? What if
plateless printing is going to be the future printing technology ? And
also, considering the not too positive reports in the WSJ and Forbes magazine,
which, I would think are the top magazines that we would not like to have
any negative reports in, and the SEC investigation, it is possible that
there is more to it than meets the eye. Another factor, of course, is Twentieth Cantury Ultra's
strong holdings. I fully understand how people holding the stock would feel
about it, especially considering the fact that Cabot's investing philosophy
may not recommend a sell at the moment. But I hope anyone who bought when
it was near its peak sold it as per Cabot's recommendation when it was 20% below
the purchase price. I would like to add that I love the idea of momentum investing
and am going to get into some of the stocks when it is fresh on the newsletter-like
when Cabot or IOMG were at $8.00. I wish everyone who holds PRST good luck.
Of course, IDID isn't a good analogy to PRST, as PRST has everything
a good company should have. I just wanted to bring out the element of
the unexpected that took place. I am not the kind of person
that exercises caution, but this experience has awakened me to the other
side of things. Among the things I learnt were-diversify, don't put too much
in any one stock, even if it looks like it is going to hit the moon, sell to
cut losses if necessary, etc. In spite of the fact that most of us know
these basic principles, sometimes, when we are in a good momentum stock,
we could be carried away, as I was. I plan to do more research on PRST and try
to buy if I can at some point.
Thanks John for your excellent comments, even when you didn't own the
stock. I wish there was a John Tooler on every thread on the newsgroup and
that John wasn't just an expert in Printing Technology.
BTW, there were a lot of people cautioning us in the IDID thread, but
there are times, being the impulsive hothead that I am, that I throw caution to
the winds and i wouldn't have listened if people screamed in my ears. I needed
a jolt like this to make me a better investor.
-Ravi |
