Well, Del, I frankly think some marriages have been ruined at SI. It really is addictive for lots of people. You don't even realize you are putting your family off, kind of in a haze where they are in the room but you aren't really with them. And then there is that other larger group of people with marriages already in some sort of trouble, where the end was cinched here. It's very hard to compete in real life with a fantasy world of bright lights and people who are beautiful and always smell wonderful because you cannot really see them, and they have created their most perfect, illusory self that they present here.
I did read, in the thousands of Ariel posts over at Yahoo, the theory that run-ups in stocks like ADSP is a sign of an hysterically overpriced market about to sink into much lower share prices all the way around. Then there is the notorious holiday effect, where people have time off from work and are sitting around at home bored and trade for fun and, hopefully, profit. It was obvious to me in reading the posts that there are lots of very new traders--shorts and longs--who don't know how to do due diligence research on stocks, and are losing badly. And then there is the proliferation of internet trading, where there is never a broker with a modicum of sense to talk you out of horribly stupid trades, and it is so much fun to see the real time quotes and punch in your own buys and sells. Internet accounts are traded a lot more frequently according to recent research, and the more you trade, statistically the more likely you are to lose.
So, do you have any stocks that are on a fast upswing at present? Do you still think Ballard is overpriced?
I don't know if I would buy Ariel back at 3. It seems to be close to bankruptcy, a company that keeps on reinventing itself with different products but is managed so badly it doesn't have much of a chance. That is, of course, unless the new technology they are touting really DOES have a big market, which seems unlikely from what I have read so far. It used to be a pretty predictable trading stock between two something and seven, though. |
