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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Gallaspy who wrote (7936)	6/30/1999 9:38:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Alan, The problem with attempting to trade these stocks during the upleg part of a cycle is that one has to make 2 correct decisions. First, selling high. Nearly impossible to get the top or even within 10% of it. Second to buy back low. It's even more difficult to get back in. My only moderate success at this type of trading was with PRIA. Fortunately, I didn't try with much of my portfolio. I would be happy if I could just predict the end of the upleg before the most of the rest of the market has already sold. Ian.

To: Alan Gallaspy who wrote (7936)	7/1/1999 9:54:00 AM
From: Mason Barge	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10921

<<Welcome back Mason. I guess there is the entire spectrum from buy and hold to hyperactive daytrading represented on this thread. Would you do us the favor of posting at the end of the month for the next several months whether your decision was astute or if you left a bundle on the table? I would be willing to bet that there are plenty of buy and hold types like myself who could do better with semi-equips if they would unload high and reload low. The whole premise of this thread is to load up cheap, but the sell point seems to be kind of tricky.>> Alan, this is exactly what I don't do anymore. With well in excess of 100% on my investment in 9-18 months, I don't give a damn if the sector rises another 100%. I'm going to go do other things until I see it crash again. Trying to pick the absolute high and the absolute low is a beginning investor's trap that costs money. Nobody can do it. My father always said that the worst thing that could happen to a golfer was to hit a hole in one, and now I understand what he was saying. I sold Cymer at the exact perfect time, at the very top of its initial run-up, and so I decided I was a genius. Not true, and it cost me some money to learn the lesson. Bulls go to the bank. Bears go to the bank. Pigs go to the slaughterhouse.