Peter:
I'm ever mindful of taxes. The 2000 and 4000 weren't selected at random, they were the highest-basis shares I have. It was still about as much fun as cutting off my hand. Overall tax bill will be $100K, not too terrible. The IRS has a lighter hand in my purse than Inland Revenue has in yours, I'm sure!
I hope you're right about Gates digging out of this hole, but it's not based on much rational thought, more wishful thinking, eh? I would rate the odds of settlement no better than 50/50, and that only because of Posner's appointment. If we go through another month with no good news, I'd say the prospects were much dimmer. Obviously despite selling yesterday I'll be ecstatic if there is a settlement soon.
From a practical standpoint, I don't want to have my money sitting in a stock that's going sideways while the rest of the market's hitting new highs daily. It's tolerable short-term but I've already missed a 6-month leg of the greatest bull market ever, and I'll be damned if I miss another 6-18 months while this thing plays out.
Most of all, though, there's a personal motivation. If we don't get a settlement then I simply don't want to spend the next year of my life the way I've spent the last month, sifting through legal analyses and worried sick about this damned case. I don't know where Brian and John get so much confidence that justice will prevail, since the US legal system looks capricious from where I sit. This is the same system that set O.J. Simpson free but killed dozens of Branch Davidians in Waco, right?
I can find any number of other stocks with equal or better earnings growth potential and that aren't surrounded by lawyers tearing at their flesh. The cure is simple, and that's to sell, which I will continue doing, in carefully chosen waves, until either the case is settled or my position's reduced to a tolerably small fraction of my portfolio. |
