Why didn't you ask me whether I thought you should sell?
I want to emphasize that the discussion here is meant to challenge your thinking. A valid challenge keeps you scared. As long as you're scared, you should hold, unless you're a long term holder. A long term holder believes on faith. It's just a guess. The point is that in a deal like this if you're right, you're really right, and thus you shouldn't sell.
This guess is starting to work as demonstrated by the fact that it's breaking out of its base. The wrong conclusion to reach is that you missed it, it's over-extended, you'll get burned if you buy, etc. The most bullish thing a stock can do is break out of a base. You buy then, not when it's correcting or when it's getting cheaper. You want to buy at the top! Keeps you long. If it's a good company, you won't even be able to find the top in future years because it will be crushed out in base noise. If you are fearful to buy now, at 8, say it rises to 9 and then drops all the way back to 6. Several years later it's at 50, and you're sitting looking at that volatility down there and asking yourself how you could be so dumb. The answer is unfounded fear which comes from bogies like interest rates, regulation, competition, all those factors that prevented Disney or IBM from ever advancing?
So why not get back in? Expect the FCC is going to kick our butts. Expect that AOL is going to kick our butts. Expect that interest rates will be rising and I'll bet they will be even though the FED believes they have to suppress them. These factors will deflate the shares, no question. And you can sit there and blame me because you could have bought at 6 instead of 8. However, no one knows the future, so you can't bet on the bogies arriving at an appropriate time, and I can't emphasize in any stronger way that it doesn't matter. The world will have broadband over the dead body of any bogey and ATHM is the premier play to deliver it. |
