Gene, <off-topic mostly>
(1) Buffet, you and numerous others have made many fortunes riding the high-flying leaders of today's market, and in many cases the stocks were bought early enough that your and others costs are very low. My point here is that this is Buffett's situation. If I owned Coke at a cost of $4/sh, would I be worried about a 20-30% correction in the overall market... No, not even close.
(2) From your posts a month or so ago, I feel you believe we should ride this tiger while the "gettin's good". And that you will have the gut feeling or something to hop off in time, before the big one hits. That gets to the stretching it part, in my view. I don't expect the market to tank on the day or month I pick out (and I know you don't either). The danger levels are high now is my main point and I tend to think was Jacob's. Though he is very capable of speaking for himself.
(3) I can't see that anything has changed in the semi-equip world, except perception, which does matter. But perception can flip back and forth in this sector during the next weeks and/or months easily. James Morgan has been routinely too optimistic with his thoughts and predictions for many years. Question may become: can he sell this BS?
He was interviewed on TV (the San Jose station, I believe) and said the Asian crisis would be a small "blip" to his company, and later made comments to the effect that the cheap PCs were irrelevant to the business environment. Excuse me, but these were not good predictions.
(4) Re: "Monetary growth." I have research that says the monetary base growth rate is slowing and may have peaked a couple of months ago. This report is dated June 12, 1998, so we need to make sure that nothing has changed since then.
(5) I would say it's a very good bet there were people who felt positively there was nothing to worry about in 1929, the economy looked good, the outlook was bright and stocks were overpriced.
(6) When the shoe-shine person is giving you his stock picks, it's a sign that darn near everybody's money is in this market already. So, after the foreigners get finished throwing their money into "safe havens", what will be the fuel for this market?
(7) I appreciate your view because you force me to try to see it through your perspective.
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