Mact, Good morning, additional observations ... as today is an impromtu declared public holiday called last minute by the concerned HK government, to close the banks and watch what happens with Australia tomorrow morning, and it is also Starbuck ice coffee time. If the lights go out in Sydney, a historic buying opportunity will have presented itself.
Yesterday, the taxi driver did ask for and accept stock tips from me. Earlier, my 70 year old mom visiting now tried to understand from me what EMC's business was (she does e-mail and surf for info), and my father in-law (who does not use i-net) had bought and mis-sold MYPT, in at 13, out at 25, leaving US$ 500k+ on the table, and he still could not tell me what the company does, nor could he tell me what the closing price is. My office administrator is following my trades, my broker is passing around my trades as his own ideas (ever since my initial lucky (nay, studied) 9984 buy in November of 1998). My neighbor and I talked Golden Power while putting out the garbage, speculated on a joint purchase of the apartment on the third floor of our 3 storey building, and discussed his Malaysian friends wanting to place money with him to speculate with in Hong Kong (free capital movement is so very important to the continued prosperity of our little island). And finally, other asset classes are being talked about in the press as follow-ons to i-net frenzy (recent spat of biotech buzz, etc), and this is inevitable as the maniac fever runs its course, affecting other assets.
I am on page 69 of "Devil Take the Hindmost" by Edward Chancellor (purchaseable at Amazon, of course), and at the bottom of the page, from the year 1720, by an anonymous pamphleteer, in great clarity ...
"The additional rise of this stock above the true capital will be only imaginary; one added to one, by any rules of vulgar arithmetic, will never make three and half; consequently, all the fictitious value must be a loss to some persons or other, first or last. The only way to prevent it to oneself must be to sell out betimes, and so let the Devil take the hindmost."
The earlier part of the book described speculative events since the Roman empire days, and I observe that if one were to replace the nouns (i-net for gold, biotech for tulips, diving engines for cellular phone, treasure in South Seas for WTO in China, etc) and change the dates (1999 for 1720, etc), the resulting words can be published in Wall Street Journal and Barrons, with no loss of sense or education value.
I do (intellectually, at least) realize that 95% of i-net companies will no longer be around by half time, but I believe it would be criminal (not to mention irresponsible to imaginary offsprings) not to play this game out and gather assets for an eventual retreat to a quiet sunny cove in Maui. Our education, experiences, and sense of historic and social relevance and duty dictate that we must contribute to the progress of i-net globalism, and as in all progressive moves, someone must eventually pay a price, even as we ourselves edge towards the emergency fire exit.
We are living in historically significant time and feeling invincible and vigorous. I felt this way once before, during 1990-1991 in Manila/Borocay, immediated after the 1989 TianAnmen event having diminished my consulting business in China, renovating (nay, flipping, in English, or stir frying in Chinese) buildings. My two Aussie partners and I started with risk capital of US$ 100k, got our NAV to US$ 7 million, and back down to US$ 100k, all in 18 short months. I learnt that bankers do use four letter words, and that "we successfully crossed the rickety suspension bridge over the deep gorge, after making proper judgement of the risks involved; and a hungry mountain lion stepped out from the rocks ...".
We got sunk in Manila by 45% per annum interest rate when Saddam invaded Kuwait, causing oil price to go up, toureism to dry up and 500k filipinos to return to Manila from the Middle East, all looking for jobs. |
