Ahh, a trip down memory lane, to bore everyone with.
Fortunately for me, I bought most all of my Dell shares between 1989 and 1993 and held till 1998. In fact, I even bought 400 shares a few weeks after Dell went public back in 1988. Set me back about $4,000. That was a lot of money back then and man was I nervous because $2000 was on margin thru my first broker, OLDE discount. But I was pretty damn proud of myself when I sold it for a $300 profit only a few weeks later. If I would have held, that little batch would be worth about $1.6M today. Would have been worth about $3M at the peak.
It's ironic though, I sold by far the largest chunk of my holdings in early November of 1998 at $32 and change... pretty much where it sits today. Dell has been dead money for 7 years now for buy and hold investors. Yet look at the eye-popping business results they have generated over that time period! That's the market for ya. Good traders however have had the opportunity to do extremely well with this stock over that period.
Yeah, I didn't get out at the top but Dell was very, very, very good to me. In all honesty, my timing couldn't have been much better... a once in a lifetime stroke of luck if you will.
I still keep a relatively small stake in the company, about 3-4% of my portfolio. I'm still a fan of the company and how it's run so it keeps things a little interesting.
MEATHEAD |
