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Strategies & Market Trends : The Rational Analyst -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HeyRainier who wrote (1675)	9/12/1999 8:55:00 PM
From: Scott H. Davis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1720

Rainier, several of are concerned about the health of the market, especially with interest rate and pre-emptive Y2K related selling concerns & preparations for defensive action. I've taken some cash off the table, locking in some good gains - to my own hurt so far. Problem is that my picks are working well now. For example, not only has ADIC & PTIX stomped, but VICL & ISIP are finally getting respect and have a good chance of additional good clinical news this fall. I'm expecting TRIBY and PERL to increase after their next qtrs, plus TRIBY should have some product announcements, with a potential blockbuster late this year. QSND should finally show some real profits. Obviously all are vulnerable to not only a broad market decline, but a return of a "fright to quality" mindset. Any reflections on holding based on good market segment performance (biotech, computer networking and storage are all working well now) vs preserving capital when you are convinced that the best the market will do the rest of the year is lose 5%? Scott BTW, Rainier recently remarked about not selling stocks setting new highs, but watching MAs (Rainier, would a 5/20 crossover be too long a time period in cases like these?) Here's an article that gives a good sense of why not to sell PTIX, ADIC or TTP in this kind of market. cbs.marketwatch.com

To: HeyRainier who wrote (1675)	9/12/1999 9:28:00 PM
From: ftth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1720

Hi Rainier, those are interesting stats. The trouble is, to miss those 40 worst days, you'd need to have been out the day prior. Generally the bad day is the one that would give the final confirmation on the signal to get out. What would be interesting is to see statistics on "runs" of bad days, but I guess that complicates things because you'd have to agree on a signal to get out and a signal to get back in. When you go that far, you enter the realm of system testing. So the question is: does Marty claim to have a method that gets clients out the day before the 40 worst days, and then possibly re-entering at the close of the bad day? I'm sure the answer is no. That's a lot of trading in relative terms, and it would be hard to call such a technique a trend following system. In fact, it'd be hard to call it a method at all since I don't believe anyone could ever execute it (except after-the-fact). So that brings us back to their Mark Twain lead-in. dh