Jean, Alan Greenspan should take some PROZAIC before he talks.
I think this man has become somewhat confused and a little irrational in his exhuberance to holler "fire" in the crowded theater of the financial world markets. His comments were wreckless the last time he spoke and I am finding him to be out of touch with reality and also inappropriate in that he is causing world wide havoc in the financial markets. The stock market in its wisdom has long been able to sort out any level of excesses on its' own. I found his posture today with the Banking committee to be totally out of order and something should be done to calm this man down. There is absolutely nothing out there to base his pessimism unless he is secretly an a astrology believer. Maybe a board of governors would be much more fitting.
Jean in answer to you question about the amount of a single stock in anyone's portfolio, I submit my following experiences.
Several Years back I thought the greatest investment in the US stock market was PHILIP MORRIS since they were on a long sustaining growth in both shareholder value and stock dividends. I did not forsee anything that could upset this wonderful investment which I had. The present presidential administration campaigned vigorously againt tobacco and shares in my Philip Morris plummeted from the low 80's down to 45 per share. I sold out my entire position in the sixties but lost a tremendous amount of money in the sale. If you might recall during that same time, drug stocks and even Coca-Cola was hit.
A couple of years ago, I decided to load up with two stocks, INTEL and MICROSOFT but when the stocks sold off sharply after INTEL reaching a high of 78 and MICROSOFT reaching a high of 108, my paper loses each day was in the thousands of dollars. I decided to exercise a little diversification even though I do believe that INTEL and MICROSOFT will be several times it's current share value in the next ten years inspite of any deranged commentaries from people like Greenspan. MY largest holding today is in MICROSOFT followed by INTEL, then Coca-Cola,Gillette, JOHNSON-JOHNSON, MERCK, CISCO, Hewlett-Packert and some mutual funds. When the market goes though periods of slumps like we are having recently, my overall portfolio does not fall as quickly than it did when I owned just INTEL and MICROSOFT.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, although I am not sure right now where it is. Incidentally, I purchased shares of INTEL at the time when most of the analyst were telling everyone to sell. I figured that they, like most of the time don't know what the hell they are talking about unless they are just trying to manipulate the markets like Alan Greenspan is now doing. I wonder if he purchased a block of puts in the s&p before he gave his speech today? I wonder in what name those options are registered??
Have a nice evening,
Frank |
