Hello James, To the contrary, I appreciate your post. I can see how a gentlemen with your lengthy experience would view this market as of late.
My opinion is (and this may be because my horizon is quite long assuming normal life expectancy) that although I would find a crash quite painful, it is difficult to match the success of those who remain in the market always if one moves in and out. I have to control my emotions by remembering that the market ALWAYS comes back. Also, most of the largest moves in ones holdings occur on a handful of days in a given year. For example, Novellus Systems had a $10/share rise in one day not long ago. It has been shown statistically that leaving the market and reentering the market based on fear of "losing" money leads to reduced returns over the long haul. I say fear of "losing" money because one does not lose until one sells. (assuming all is well with the company and ones problem is the market).
With respect to anticipating a market disaster -- I believe I am correct in noting that there have been 6 market crashes this century. Each was preceeded by rising inflation AND a rise or rises in interest rates. I believe the only exception to this rule was the crash of '29 which was sparked by the FED's desire to reduce what they saw as excessively high stock valuations by raising rates. I think its safe to say the FED will never do that again!
I have not heard of IGEN but believe someone has dropped in and mentioned it before. I enjoy researching stocks in my spare time and will check into this device of IGEN's for you. If I can understand what it does, I will look up your personal profile and post on your thread which I assume is IGEN as long as I find something not already posted there.
I have not had time to look at it at all yet but, your description makes it sound remarkably like refractive index. This technology has been around so if I am correct what will be significant here is the modifications and resulting applicational differences they have achieved. Enzymes are made of strings of amino acids which, because they exhibit what's called "chirality", rotate plane polarized light which passes through them. If the sample is pure, the user of such a piece of equipment can look through the sample, through which the light is shining, and turn a knob until a marker appears focused. At this point, a display shows a number which can be looked up against a long list of standard values and in this way the substance is quickly identified. When you mention heart enzymes, creatine phosphokinase comes to mind which is present at elevated levels in the blood stream following a heart attack. This can be quite useful in separating indigestion etc. from far more serious problems. If this machine you talk about operates on the principles above which I described then one could see how it might be used, as hypothetical example, to identify creatine phosphokinase as it too is composed of amino acids which might rotate plane polarized light in a unique pattern. This is speculation based on your description but it does sound interesting if I am on the right track. If this principal is already in use in the clinic it is unknown to me. (I am not a clinician) If IGEN has found a way to make it of use as it was not already, it certainly sounds like something similar would be a rapid and cost effective dianostic tool. Anyway, I'll look to see what it is. I don't know why I would speculate! The time I've spent guessing here would have been more than sufficient to have looked the whole story up and have been done with it!
Have a good day,
BENNETT |
