<< As to millionaires, just pull out the yellow pages and start calling. We've got a zillion of them now with the run-up in the market from those that don't buy & sell, but just buy and hold.>>
Sunfish,
You got that right. Right now I'm barely above break even for '97. Back when WDC hit $54 a few months ago and I was holding 14k at $27.5 I was so close to being the next one the "yellow pages" I could almost reach out and touch it.
The first individual stock I ever bought was 50 shares (which was every last $ I could scrape up) of INTC in late '94, I believe, before the 75 Mhz Pentium bug was discovered. It seems so long ago. I remember the stock sold off and my uncle told me that nobody would trust INTC chips anymore, and that I'd better take my loss and get out while I still could. My response was "well if not Intel who are they gonna get their chips from ?" I held on to those shares, cashed in my mutual funds and bought more INTC every chance I could though 95, and 96. Found out about INTCW mid 96 and bought until I finally sold everything in Jan'97. I put it ALL into DELL at 73. Of course, Dell went to 61 right after I bought. I hung in there figuring Dell would be fairly priced at about $100. Unfortunatety I sold at 92, making a nice profit, but am still kicking myself since it has doubled since then. I sold Dell to buy WDC at 27 and am glad I decided to take profits after it warned and stock was around 40.
I try to invest based on my interpretation what the fundamentals of the co. will look like a year or so into the future. Instead of looking in the rear view mirror, I strap on a pair of infrared binoculars so I can see down the road a ways and cut through all the current short sighted smoke and BS surrounding the stock. I sold INTCW and WDC based on my perception that the fundamentals were changing. I sold Dell based on it approaching my idea of fair value (PEG=1) again a bad move.
I bought ASND avg. at 41 based on my view of fundamentals going forward.
What I didn't see through the binoculars was the ravine right in front of me. Of course I fell right in and got banged up pretty bad. Luckily I found plenty of climbing gear left by all those investors that were killed when they sold their shares at 22. The fundamentals have not changed and the short term problems
have been fixed. All those quoting market share loss to CSCO, and COMS when ASND wasn't selling any product due to these short term problems had better check again when results for the current Q come out. ASND has already shiipped 1.7 M k56flex ports with nearly a month left in the Q. IMHO ASND will take back every bit of market share it lost in RAS as well as gain market share in FR and ATM switching.
The "flaw" in my ASND outlook is CSCO. They have targeted ASND as their main threat (which played a small part in my reasoning for buying ASND). If CSCO succeeds in crushing ASND, I'm in big trouble. IMHO the buyers of networking equip. do NOT want CSCO to have a monopoly in the areas where ASND competes. Since ASND is the counter to CSCO, the ISP's etc. will not allow them to fold. Sooner or later ASND will become part of a larger player that will use them and other acquistions to give CSCO some real competition across their entire product line.
So even though my timing is always lousy, every stock I've ever owned has made me $$$. Hopefully ASND will make me proud in '98. I like that new song with the lyrics "I can go down, but I'll get up again. You're never gonna keep me down....repeat." That's the story of my life in the stock market so far.
Regards,
Lee
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