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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: R.V.M. who wrote (2963)	6/22/1999 10:29:00 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

How I almost lost my butt on SAP Back in April of '98, after reading the "Gorilla Game", I became fascinated by SAP. It was a Gorilla, no one knew about it, I thought, you could not find it in the financial's. I found out that I was going to be listed on the NYSE that summer, and was going to split 4 to 1. I thought, "Hoooo-boy!" I am a genius who has discovered a Gorilla in the mist that will go through the roof when it is listed. I started buying it, and had made it 17% of my portfolio first of August, and I was up about 27% on it. In June, I had joined SI, and started reading and posting to the SAP thread. As I remember, we all sounded like the people on the Dell thread, we were so excited, and sure we were going to make a bundle. But people started posting to the thread, and asking questions. When I would answer some of these questions, I discovered doubts beginning to creep in. First, the PE was up to about 380, as I recall. Second, as we got close to the NYSE listing, the price got stagnant. Third, I realized I was dealing with a European company, not one that ran on "American Time". Fourth, I was getting feedback that the big ERP market was saturated, and would be affected by 2YK. I would not have had this info if I had not joined SI. On August 4th, after the listing, it dropped from 61 on Friday to 55 on Monday. I thought, have I been caught in "buy on the rumor, and sell on the news?" I sold half my position. I hung on to the rest until the 24th. It stayed in the low 50's, and I sold the rest of my position on Aug 24th. I ended up with a 10% profit. I told my thread mates I was out, and was not received too warmly. The moral of this story is that, if I had not joined SI and started reading and posting on SAP, I would have probably been arrogant about my purchase and stayed in all the way down to 30. Reading these threads, and responding to questions, made me re-examine my position, and bail out. That was when I realized the value of our little community.