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

To: Daiju Kohno who wrote (8106)	10/11/1999 4:31:00 PM
From: Bridge Player	Respond to of 54805

<< Sorry for the long opinion. Guess I'm just bored today :)>> No need whatsoever to apologize. An excellent treatise on the intelligent use of margin by an obviously successful investor. I fully agree with your statement that moderate use of margin is no more risky than a heavily-concentrated portfolio. BP

To: Daiju Kohno who wrote (8106)	10/11/1999 5:18:00 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Pardon me for being contentious, Kohno san, but I violently disagree with your assessment of risks. Margin calls force you to take action at precisely the worst moments, making what would have been temporary portfolio losses permanent. I don't want to turn this into a "mine is bigger than yours" debate, but your returns of 200% for the last 12 months using margin are less than those achieved by many unmargined Gorilla game investors over the same period, and your risk assumption is many times higher. Go back to the dell thread and ask many of our old friends about the damage caused by margin. Sadly, some of the dellheads with the most insights no longer post or even invest. uf

To: Daiju Kohno who wrote (8106)	10/11/1999 5:28:00 PM
From: John Walliker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

DK, Sure, you can lose everything if you are fully margined on a stock that nosedives to near 0, ... What you do not say about margin borrowing, compared with holding stock or even options is that you can lose MORE than you have in your account. This why I have now (mostly) given up using margin and use LEAPS to achieve leverage instead. (Yes, I know its not true GGing.) But the worst case downside is clearly defined and its not a negative number. John