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I'm probably the wrong person to ask about getting out. I never see anything coming, and have experienced serious buzz-cuts from MANU, BROD, COMS, SEG, and CA the last few years (and days). But I'm closing in on a zen-like serenity in reaction to these occasional disasters. :-) Because I know that I cannot get the kind of information that is necessary to avoid them (and I'm not sure anyone can), I'm not going to sweat trying to figure out when to stay or when to go. In the end, the probabilities are against you if you try to time the market. The fact is, going into big events like earning announcements, you can have low volume or high volume, a big run-up or a big sell-off, and none of that is going to tell you what's going to happen with that announcement. If, god forbid, things go sour, your great little growth company will get bought out by some other company before things get too bad. For example, I bought Broderbund Software about 18 mos ago on a whim. Now, THAT gave me a lesson in whiplash. But out of the woodwork comes the Learning Company to snatch up BROD on the cheap. Now, I'm an owner of TLC which has much better prospects, and I've almost regained what I lost. Very very few companies retrace back all the way to their original starting places (tho, Wang Labs, Apple, and Novell come to mind). So basically, I buy good companies like TLAB and let it ride. Hopefully when I die, my children will inherit TLAB stock with a split-adjusted basis of 2 cents a share. |
