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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis

SOXX 296.74

+1.8%

Nov 28 4:00 PM EST

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To: zonder who wrote (7296)	11/28/2002 1:30:01 PM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (2) of 95487

Not to be insensitive here, but would I be right in guessing that most of you have lost significant amounts of money over the past year or so while trying to catch this elusive bottom? You would be wrong in my case. I left techland as an optical transceiver designer (chips and modules) at HP (now Agilent) in 1998 to try working on the internet.. that is another story, but I can say I have not put net dollars into the market since I left and I have used my portfolio to pay for my "experiments" as well as living expenses. I "trade" around a core position with an asset allocation approach. Stocks go up and I sell, Stocks go down and I buy what looks good. I tried mutual funds and brokers in the 1980's and they always under performed it seemed. I then started to look for good companies that were "cheap" much like a pair of Levi's on sale after the holidays. IBM was my first and I saw it grow 60% then crash 75%... When it looked like management had it together, I bought big and it went up 8x where I then sold my original stake and sit on house money. Now and then I sell some and pay myself a nice dividend... I had similar success with Intel and MSFT as well. Probably a lucky guess to be at Comdex in '93 and figure out that the PC I used at work for a decade was going to go beyond engineers and scientists and WinTel would benefit. Then I thought about options to play the cycles on Intel and found that most made money on commissions selling them... as many expire worthless and you can be right but wrong on timing... So I discovered the semicapx sector was like an option on Intel that never expired unless you pick a crummy company that goes bust or misses a cycle. Small buys of AMAT and LRCX have multiplied many, many fold and I've taken out and spent far, far more than I put in... but it takes time... much time. Often I can be wrong (too early to sell or buy) and I look foolish for awhile... so now I buy and sell in "steps" much like Cary does. I started a newsletter in late 1998 (9/30/98) for my internet site as a way for readers to support me and to see if what I had learned for myself to play tech cycles I could repeat "on the record". That portfolio is up 169.5% while the S&P500 is down 2.2% over that period. Maybe it is luck? Many here were too early to use all their dry powder but I was worrried we'd hit old support levels.... It turned out I was right, but still missed the bottom by a factor of 2! Since I am an asset allocator, I was able to do significant buying near the lows and have booked already huge gains in this rally. If it fails, I'll do it again with the money taken out. If we keep going higher, then I will be happy the shares I still hold are going up. We also have some very good traders here. Advocat-devil simply amazed us by playing the dark side on AMAT while the stock was in an up trend! We later learned he was long AMAT and was using the dark side to exit but still his results were impressive. We have a good group here and we learn from each other. Hopefully, you can add to it. Kirk

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