Jacob, I don't have a lot of confidence in my ability to predict the market short term, but as I mentioned before I have been and still am bullish. However, as prices go higher the chance of a correction increases of course. I think you have been doing an excellent job of timing the market and individual stocks short term, so I would go with your judgement.
As for me, it looks like I got lucky with some recent purchases of QLGC, CIEN, and JNPR. However, I moved a bit out of margin after the towers got hit (felt I had to, unfortunately, but no margin calls at least), and by going into these more risky stocks I probably just offset the effect of the net selling I did, or maybe did better than that. Today (lunch time) and yesterday I bought SANM, the contract manufacturer. Basically it just looked like a good valuation, and was beaten down more than most in that group. Short term at least got a bit lucky on that as well, as it was upgraded today. I also added a little bit today to NTAP, one that has been on your list.
My strategy over the past 7 years or so has been one that worked well in bull markets. I was a buy on the dip guy. I am still trying to adapt to this type of market we are in. I feel like a fish out of water at times, as my personality type tends to make me more bullish than I probably should be. Hopefully not too old to learn how to be a better trader.
As for the market from here out, I know it is overvalued per a few different ways of looking at it. However, short term the market can make moves that completely ignore valuation. I am really interested in trying to catch the longer trend right with regards to tech. At heart I believe technology is tremendously important to the future of America, and I think it should get some sort of boost from the aftermath of the attacks (e.g. videoconferencing, more use of the web and cell phones, etc.). I don't know when the tech world and our overall economy will get back on track, but am more focused on if rather than when, as long as the when part does not mean 3 or more years out.
I am somewhat fascinated by the way the market tends to surprise people most of the time. Right now it seems hardly anyone thinks the market could make a big move up from here, so therefore I think it could maybe end up doing just that.
Maybe we go down from here and "re-test" the lows, who knows. But I look forward to the day when the skies are clear for technology stocks again. I wish I had more experience with previous major lows in the market (e.g. early 70's, Crash of 87, etc.). I know that the overall market has been cheaper at such market bottoms, but that does not mean that we will repeat this here. The massive Fed cuts, and the economic stimulus, plus a few other things could be helping out.
Thanks for posting your views and trades often. Going forward I would like to go more with your approach, trading more and selling a bit near the end of the rallies if possible.
Maybe just when I get good at trading this kind of market it will change back into the (bull) market where my previous approach worked so well, and then I will have to adapt all over again. I don't mean Nasdaq 5,000, that could be 5 years away, who knows.
One final comment, I heard this military analyst on TV suggest that Halloween might be the timing for another attack on the USA. The argument does have some merit. I will be a bit relieved if we get through that with no incident.
One final, final, comment. Maybe the government should try to take advantage of what is going on in threads like this one, and get inputs from people on how to handle this military and politcal campaign, and perhaps all sorts of things. Maybe we need a "How to bet Bin Ladin" thread or something like that. Use what Napolean Hill referred to as the "Mastermind Principle". Just a thought - tap the smart folks like we have here on the AMAT thread for the good of the USA. One other idea: How about the government funds a sort of high-tech company to design gadgets or whatever to help get him. Maybe some kind of smart spider like things with small cameras that we could drop in to crawl all over those mountains until one of them finds him, and sends a signal back to base for special forces to arrive. I am envisioning a place that would be like a focused think-tank & R&D place for technologies like this. Hope I am not going to far off track with this idea. As an engineer myself, I often drift this way as I think of the whole mess we are dealing with over there in Afghanistan.
Time to call it a night here, fading out. No proof-reading on this one, hope it makes some sort of sense, whatever it was that I just wrote!
Regards,
John |
