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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing

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To: Allen Furlan who wrote (11135)	9/10/2000 12:24:54 AM
From: James Clarke	Read Replies (7) of 78702

Topic for discussion: Investing in a flat market. The indexes have been up in the 20s in 1998 and 1999. 1998 was a pretty good year for me, but I absolutely lost my shirt in 1999. I went about 12 months where I could do absolutely nothing right, and plenty wrong. Fortunately I did a lot of writing preserved on this thread and in my investing diary so I never forget how frustrating that period was. Since March it has just seemed very very easy to hit single after single, with a few doubles sprinkled in there - and the big difference, no major losses. I was so shellshocked after the past year that it took me a while to even notice that things were getting easier. I have learned a few new analytical tools since then, but fundamentally I don't think I'm doing anything terribly different than I was doing last year (except I gave up shorting tech stocks in early March - needless to say, that does not explain the turnaround). I think many value investors gave up and went into tech (I guess by covering shorts I bought the peak too) or just sold everything they had left in February and March. I think this thread was a real asset then to help us all keep our heads while everybody else was losing theirs. I don't think any regular contributor to this thread gave in to the temptation in any big way. Anybody who stayed the course has been richly rewarded in a flat market. This doesn't feel like a bear market to me at all. If last year was a bull market and this year is a bear market, I pray to God I never see a bull market again in my lifetime. I learned a lot in the last two years, but I don't think that accounts for 20% gains this year in a flat market. Something really changed in my view. The bigger question is this. And this is a question to the valued contributors to this thread who are old enough to have watched the moon landing when I was in diapers. IS THIS YEAR HOW VALUE INVESTING USUALLY FEELS OR IS WHAT i AM SEEING NOW AS MUCH AN ANOMALY AS LAST YEAR WAS IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION? THEY SAY DON'T CONFUSE BRAINS WITH A BULL MARKET. COULD I BE CONFUSING BRAINS WITH A BEAR MARKET? IS THERE ANY SUCH THING AS A "NORMAL" MARKET?

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