On topic, mostly:
Well, I'm back. Had a good time, rafting the Salmon, doing every slide in the Edmonton Water Park, soaking in the Liard Hot Springs, dodging moose on the Alaska Highway. Got home, logged on, looked at the charts, feel like somebody dumped a bucket of ice-water on me. Doubleplusungood.
Clearly, my interpretation of where the market was going, has been wrong, all this year. I was very certain the 9-10/01 lows would hold, in the Nas and SOX and AMAT. I loaded up on AMAT at 19-21, and used margin. And got hurt seriously. Set limit orders in late July, to sell all at around 20, and we never got there.
What now? I'm looking at a 5-year chart of AMAT, and we are exactly back where we were in late 1997. 5 years of up and down and round and round and umpteen thousands of posts on the AMAT thread(s), and no net gain. I'm fairly certain we weren't in a bubble in 1997. I'm fairly certain AMAT is a bigger company in a bigger industry, with a bigger customer base, and dominating more semi-equip niches, than in 1997.
We're going to be getting our Alaska Dividend checks soon, and I think I'm going to use it to buy some AMAT LEAPs, probably 2005 15s or 20s.
Then, I want to go back on the road and offline, and not look at any stock charts, for a while. A year, maybe two. |
