I've held LSI for years, but did take profits in the 70's since it's historically been a cyclical (OK we'll see if it is this time). I admire the buy and hold approach, but:
There's those 1929 sayings about selling when you start getting stock tips from the shoeshine boy:
I am known as a stock guy, and in the last year, about half the office and most friends have come begging for stock tips "to get into the market". In the last 3-4 months, my 64 year old mother who has never bought stocks in her life decided to get into a BIG MO stock, and boss shifted out of CDs into tech funds, etc, etc.
There's also the saying that stocks are supposed to discount the future, not the hereafter...It usually seems that when the chart goes vertical/exponential for a while like the NASDAQ starting last fall, it doesn't last.
It's hard to believe anything's "undervalued" as the future was certainly discounted. Maybe they will be in a few more days though. Note the last line of this editorial from this weeks Barron's: =====================================================
As you can imagine, it's a huge temptation for an oft-baited bear like
ourselves to revel in the carnage. And as we survey the wreckage, we can't
help wondering which of the limbs sticking out from under the rubble belong
to the momentum players, which to members of the buy-on-the-dip crowd, which
to followers of the false prophets of Dow 36,000 and which to the other
peddlers of New Era twaddle.
But mother always told us not to be unseemly. Besides, nothing more unnerves
us than the sound of weeping widows and wailing orphans. So we'll simply
mention the fact that Nasdaq was down 25% for the week and 34% from its
high, and the S&P 500 lost 10.5%, while the Dow caved a whopping
805.71 points over the five trading sessions.
We'll refrain, too, from chronicling how individual issues, all of them
yesterday's darlings, have melted like one of Ben & Jerry's cool creations
in a microwave.
Frankly, we're grateful to be able to muster such restraint. Otherwise, we'd
feel compelled to cite such gory examples of former favorites in extremis as
Amazon.com, off 58.5% from its yearly high of 113. Or Keynote Systems, 33
1/4 and sinking, down from 177 six weeks ago. Or Red Hat, which has crumpled
from 151 in December to 24 1/8 last week. Or VerticalNet, suffering from a
severe bout of vertigo that has dropped it from 148 plus in March to 28. Or
CrayFish, which slid from 166 in March to 13.
Our hearts go out, of course, to the victims of the Great April Massacre.
Especially those poor innocents who discovered, thanks to their friendly
online or old-fashioned broker, the joys of margin. One benefit: Having your
broker unbidden sell your stock relieves you of the fuss and mess of doing
it yourself.
Making the horrendous fall of Nasdaq hurt all the more is that a lot of
presumed pros, too blinded by success and/or greed (they're all too often
boom companions) almost willfully refused to see it coming. Kid analysts
continued to churn out buy recommendations even as the stocks they were
recommending fell off the cliff, and fund managers wouldn't or couldn't
lighten up before the market saved them the trouble.
Resolutely on the alert for silver linings, we draw some comfort from the
fact that one of the raging disputes of our time has finally been
resolved -- yes, it was a bubble.
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