Hi Lurqerdude,
I'm glad to see you.
I hope your trip to Maui was as wonderful as I can imagine.
I feel very stupid in hindsight for having so much faith in the promise of LHSP. I could not imagine them going down like this. I never believed that complete fraud would even be a possibility. Especially from a leader in their field of work. All they had to do it keep their train on the track and eventually technology would catch up to them and propel them further than anyone could imagine. Instead, they were beefing up their books during a time where many investors were more interested with their future revenue growth than their current revenue growth.
I just can't understand it.
Did they think that they would never get caught?
I hope they pay dearly for the fraud they have apparently committed.
I personally got off lucky in comparison to what could have happened to me.
If I remember correctly, I had been buying common stock when it had dipped to the $9 range.
There was a technical bounce where I took advantage by selling near $14, with the plan of re-entering when it planed off again.
This time, however, I decided to keep 3/4 of this cash and put towards a different losing trade. (At least this one has not declared bankruptcy, yet <g>)
With the remaining 1/4 of this cash I bought March Calls with the idea that 5-6 months should be long enough to plane off and recover some especially with the promise of the coming Santa Rally and January Effect...
I figured by using my calls I could leverage my way back into the full position of common shares at a later date.
I figured wrong.
But now I look at it as me getting a little lucky.
Without realizing it I found that I had bought myself an insurance policy on a very sick company. I only lost 1/4 of what I could have lost.
What will happen to the current shareholders? Will they benefit as parts of LHSP gets broken up and sold?
Will they benefit if someone buys out the entire company?
Any chance of it happening before the March expiration? <g>
I still like the sector but have no investments in the area.
In the NY area, I've been noticing a trend toward making cell phone use in automobiles illegal unless it is of the hands-free type. Several counties are proposing this as a new law. I've heard similar reports of NJ doing the same.
This could put VR on the front burner.
In addition, I saw on TV, that the Car Show in Las Vegas featured many cars with on board internet computers.
Most of these were in their concept cars, but I saw Microsoft promoting their Windows CE for Automobiles software.
I'll look into SPWX and NUAN.
It looks like they are mending very quickly.
I find that I'm becoming more and more jaded to following the hot trends.
Although the cuts in interest rates give me faith that the market will begin to recover, I still feel a little hesitant jumping back into my old method of chasing the momentum.
(I know I'm should feel this way at the market top rather than at the bottom...)
I'm beginning to think that LTB&H in some of these sectors will not work.
It seems like sectors get extremely over valued in such short time frames now.
Then a massive campaign to short the stock takes place especially with the slightest hint of a slowing growth rate.
I guess I'm just a little gun shy.
Although there has been a lot of pessimism in the market, I'm not quite certain that this bottom is indicative of a typical market bottom.
I've never seen one, but from what I've read, usually most small investors should be too scared to ever want to play the market again.
I'm not that frightened yet...
Especially since Mr. Greenspan lowered interest rates.
Now I have this little mind game going on in my head, that I should not fight the Fed, but also, I should try to learn from my previous mistakes. Perhaps chasing the momo's is not the right way for me to go...
Another game in my head is: Have I finally crossed the line, where perhaps I'm a tad bit ahead of the typical investor in understanding this game? If so, is this the reason why I do not fear this market as much as I figured I would at a market bottom? Or, at a real bottom, is EVERYONE (no exceptions) too scared to jump back in?
Other thoughts in my head:
1) Will Fiber Optics/Bandwidth be the next sector to go up astronomically only to implode like the Dotbombs.
Will this hold true for every hot sector?
Of course the FO/Bandwidth sector probably have much better business models than the Dotbombs, but won't there be intense competition?
2) I see technology growing at an incredible pace, however, by the time that standards begin to get implemented, technology changes direction.
I liken it to a huge flock of tiny birds or an immense school of small fish. For a while there are a few leaders, but then suddenly with in an instant, the flock or school turns direction. Now there is a new group of leaders.
Do I invest in the tiny leader fish monitoring them closely for the next leader, or do I invest in the big tuna who is about to devour many in the school?
Or, perhaps, it's best to leverage into the tiny leaders (buying calls using smaller amounts of cash) only at the market bottom and quickly take profits as they show the slightest sign or change in direction...
3) Focusing on one particular investment style seems to be the most difficult thing for me to figure out...
The latest market fall has me really confused.
Does LTB&H in techs really work if this is the way the market tumbled?
Is trading these volatile techs anymore than just a guessing game?
...just thinking out loud, I guess.
Sorry for ramblin'...
It's good to see you here.
Take your coat off.
-Clappy
P.S. I'm falling in love with ELON.
I know she is bad for me. She's going to take all my money.
But she sure is pretty. She's got lots of promise, too.
It's getting hard to resist.
I have to stop looking...
I know should stick to the smart Gorillas...
ughh...
<Clappy slaps some sense back into himself and closes the windows to the Motley Fool ELON board, SI's ELON boards, and the various ELON hype links he has opened up...>
<...he may have them closed, but they are certainly bookmarked for later use...he's too weak to resist...thoughts of making them his largest investment keep popping into his head...he should know better...Lord, give him strength to resist and play it safe...>
:^)
<He writes the letters LHSP on the wall in Crayon directly over his computer as a reminder of what blind faith can do...> |
