Dear Bill: I'm sticking by my advice that techs should be sold while prices are high, high, high and the money shifted to money markets, CDs, and the stocks of dividend-paying, boring value stocks (particularly financials and consumer durables) while those prices are low, low, low.
Its hard to dispute you on this, but my problem is the taxes. I and I suspect many old timers like me have HUGE unrecognized capital gains. At a minimum we will pay 20% capital gains taxes at the Federal level. So the market pulls back 20% we are only even, say it pulls back 30% ok we can pick up or save 10%. Then what. We gotta know when and where to buy. Personally, in the foreseeable future I just cant see a pullback exceeding 30% and even that is less likely in my judgement then a 20% pullback. I am not arguing with you just thinking my thoughts out loud. Like you, I have a nice X myself and wouldnt want to lose it, on the other hand there are no CD's that allow people to live a decent retirement. So I am in a quandry. I think I am rather conservative, I have no margin, no personal debt of any kind, about 40% of my portfolio is in Fixed income securities, about 15% in cash and the balance in common stocks with probably 80% of that in Techs. What do you think? JDN |
