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Non-Tech : PSUN A new breakout at $30+! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Duane L. Olson who wrote (1194)	6/10/1999 3:50:00 AM
From: Toby Zidle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1622

Hi Duane, <How do you make your decisions on timing, if you don't mind sharing?> I base most of my buys/sells (but not all) on charting. For buying, my key indicator is the horizontal resistance line. I look for breakthroughs, particularly when they wipe out double or triple tops. I also do a lot of bottom fishing (including adding to my PSUN position). Here I start with the horizontal support line. If it holds, I reset my 'high alarm limit' to $1 - $2 above support and use penetration of that line as the 'buy' signal. This works particularly well when you have a cyclical-action stock that have multiple tops and bottoms over time at the same resistance and support lines. But I do like those two lines to be at lest $10 apart. After that, I use a multitude of auxiliary signals, but none of them consistently. One I got from a Dow Jones TAGS seminar in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. I look at the ADXR line, computed with (14,3,3) parameters. When ADXR crosses from under '15 to above '15', that indicates a strengthening trend (but at very early stages). The trend could be down as well as up, so it then requires active intervention for interpretation on my part. If your IQC charts support these parameters, look at charts of RFMI (long at $7 1/4), TBMS, and PMCS (long for 13 months) with ADXR. Also, I subscribe to 'Market Edge' from Computrade for their technical interpretations. I find their timing isn't the best, but their decision making looks top-rate. They are typically in the momentum stocks with a profit and out of the losers. And then I subscribe to 'Ticker Tape Digest' tickertapedigest.com for T.A. interpretations of accumulation/distribution. Excellent daily newsletter @ $100/month. TTD is written by Leo Fasciocco, who has written most of the IBD's 'Investors Corner' columns dealing with technical analysis. Sharp guy who is very willing to discuss stocks on the phone also. And there is the IBD itself. For the portion of my portfolio that I want to keep longer-term positions in, I buy stocks that have minimum '80/90/A/A/A' and hold until there's confirmed deterioration. Another good newsletter is 'The Spear Report', which takes a dozen or so of the highest-rated newsletters (by Hurlburt, I believe) and compiles tables of their most recommended stocks. The top 30 stocks are always tremendous long-term winners, so I follow the additions and deletions of these top 30 (of nearly 200 stocks in total). I use the SI and Yahoo boards as sentiment indicators. I prefer SI. I don't buy or sell on the basis of postings, but sometimes they confirm inclinations that are forming with less than full evidence. Finally, I want to keep up with news of stocks I'm long in. Yahoo and Briefing.com have very good news servers. SI's is 'OK - nothing special'. Nordby.com looks very promising, though I haven't used it enough to say definitively. Nordby.com also has great analyst coverage and links to the analyst reports. (Some may cost $$, but I haven't played with it enough to really know.) News in local papers can give you a heads up for small cap stocks, especially those that are not based in New York, Chicago, LA, or Silicon Valley. Excite's 'Newstracker' has the best newspaper search engine I can find. nt.excite.com Now what about selling? There are two basic methodologies I use. First, if I have a decent profit (>30%), I try to use a mechanical system to protect profit. I sell when I have lost my top 15% of profit. (I never try to sell out at the Highs, because there always seem to be new highs lurking in the shadows.) Second, for not so profitable positions, I rely on support levels. Break support and (in theory) out it goes. But this is a very fuzzy criterion for me. I got quite tired of taking losses only to see that I sold near a bottom and would have had a nice profit two weeks later. Sometimes I get into a mess of trouble here, but before selling I ask my self why I was in the stock and what has changed. If the outlook is still positive and the uptrend is basically still intact, then I keep the stock. That is what kept me in PSUN in November and again now. This is where the chartist in me has to stand back and look at a bigger picture. Sometimes I lose big this way, but more often I find losers that turn back into winners after problems have been resolved by the company.