Andy,
re: "in general most of them lost half their value from the peak, some lost even more"
I'm hip. My holdings as a whole fell 40% from peak to the bottom which occurred perhaps a month ago. So I certainly am not singling out Semtech. But though the 40% drop may sound terrible, I'm not that upset. Since I own only tech stocks, and since they tend to be volatile, my account is occasionally subjected to this kind of fluctuation. I had similar drops in July of 1996 and then again in April 1997, and now of course. My portfolio takes three steps forward, then two steps back, and so on. The recent low for my account, however, was almost twice the low of July 96.
I tend towards a buy and hold approach to investing. That is, I look for investments that I think are good to hold long term. I look at value, and I try to buy stocks that are what I consider fair to under valued, and I sell stocks that I think are overvalued.
So if a stock I own has a huge run up, I then think about the valuation. If a stock has a big run up and I think it's significantly overvalued, I will sell it, irregardless of how long I've owned it. When Semtech was peaking last October, I did not think it was overvalued, so I held on to it.
Now, as in October, I'm simply saying we need to keep an eye on the rate of advance along with the valuation. If things get out of hand, yes, I would prefer to sell with a huge profit rather than to watch half of the value vanish. I think I'm early in raising any flags, but that's my intent. I don't think we're overvalued, and I think we could go quite a ways further before we were overvalued. But at the current rate of advance, that might not take too long.
Semtech's not $4 and grossly undervalued anymore. We should be savvy, and make the right, best, investment decisions. For now, I'm positive that the choice is to hold.
Did I say anything worthwhile here?
Stu B
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