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

To: Apollo who wrote (4418)	7/31/1999 10:33:00 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

Stan, I tend not to use stop-losses on my longterm holdings, because of past experience at being stopped out of a company I want and which then takes off after I'm out. Same here. I have instead been thinking of using some options to "buy insurance" for what might be rather predictable downturns in a stock. As an example, my Citrix has a history of plummeting following an earnings announcement. It's done it again and I didn't have anything in place to protect myself. Will everyone on this board please send rotten tomatoes through my modem next quarter if I fail yet AGAIN to get my butt in gear!!!!!!!!!!!!! --Mike Buckley

To: Apollo who wrote (4418)	7/31/1999 11:47:00 AM
From: DlphcOracl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

OT Dear Snasraway: Regarding Delphic Oracle "investing philosophy": Regarding your questions: 1. What if I'm wrong and have to buy at a higher price? For a few stocks, I probably will have to. However, I do not see any of these stocks (even ones with strong momentum like JDSU) being up more than 15% by mid-September than they were when I sold out on July 15th. I set up a portfolio "watch-list" of two dozen top-tier tech stocks I like on July 15th as I raised cash and guess what? One is even, two are up (including JDSU) and ALL of the others are in the red, some as much as 25%! JDSU, the top performer of these stocks since July 15th is up 13%. In short, the risk/reward ratio says to be patient and wait 'til mid-Sept.-Oct 1st for serious buying. 2. My "philosophy": I wish I was smart enough to say I have one! Ideally, I'd like to have 50-60% of my portfolio in long-term hold stocks (CSCO, EMC, AOL, QCOM, LU, NXLK, WCOM are my present LT holds) and have 40% available for momentum plays and intermediate-term buys (hold 2 to 10 months). This year, I was heavily weighted in internet stocks through June and made some good profit; if I had been smarter and sold off in April instead of 1st week June, I could have made some great profit. Tough nuggies. At present, AOL is my only i-net holding. I will look for others in 4th quarter. 3. Stop losses: I do not have stop losses on my long-term holds. When initiating a new position, whether short or long-term, I have a hard-and-fast rule that I will sell if the stock drops 8% and use stop loss orders for this. I don't care what stock it is or what it's long-term prospects are. A quick 8% loss means something is wrong -- bad karma, negative sentiment, tech market downtown, etc. Sure, I take a lot of quick 8% losses; but that is far better than taking a lot of quick 20-30% losses!! 4. I invest only in tech and internet stocks. I seem to have a better "feel" for them than I do for investing in GE, Caterpillar or Kentucky Widgets. I hold 12-18 stocks and tend to overweight my 2 or 3 "best" ideas, up to 20% of total portfolio for any individual stock. For what it's worth, the ones I'm overweighted in are CSCO and QCOM. When I establish positions in them in Sept/Oct., I will also overweight JDSU and Softbank. I think Softbank is the best 'net play over the next 2-3 years; if it ever sells as an ADR in the U.S., watch out! IMHO, it is where CMGI was 2 years ago. One last comment: this is far from being what anyone should do and I'm certain many readers on this thread have better, more profitable systems. This seems to have worked reasonably well for me and it is a system I am comfortable with and can sleep with. Best of luck to all investors on this thread.