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

To: Grantcw who wrote (10225)	11/13/1999 12:26:00 AM
From: Bruce Brown	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Grant, As a preacher's kid and a LTB&H fanatic, let me preach. A winner like Qualcomm you just let ride for a good length of time. The investors who made millions in gorillas Microsoft, Cisco as well as Godzilla AOL and Prince Dell bought them and let them ride. Qualcomm is in the Gorilla category. The entire point of the game is to improve your quality of life and get you away from checking the price all day long. Step back and relax. Think three to five years into the future. All technology stocks will be volatile enough to test you in the best of times and in the not so best of times. We have all made mistakes and will continue to make a few. However, once you have your money in the 'right' stocks - let them ride because the long term will reward you. If you've read the inside jacket of The Gorilla Game - especially the revised manual - you will see what an investor that held Microsoft from 1986, or Cisco from 1990 has done without ever selling or buying another share. Powerful enough medicine to end your day trading game cold turkey. Has anyone been able to time the gorillas so efficiently over the course of their run as to sell at the peaks and load up in the valleys that, after the taxes were paid, they were able to have even higher returns than had they just held? If I saw it on paper - I mean proof with all the buys and sells to substantiate it - I would be really surprised. Even if I did see it, I would hasten to guess that the quality of life of trying to pull that off would not be one that makes for quality sleeping, eating, career and family time. My suggestion would be to let your Qualcomm be. Leave it alone and don't be tempted by the volatility to draw you back to your day trading (where only 10 percent of traders make money). Instead, save your money and add to other positions or take new positions in the future as you have new money to invest. Read Mike Buckley's excellent post Message 11910008 about taking your time, doing your research and having the discipline to not be hasty with decisions. Don't watch the Q so much. Know what it is you invested in and check the pitcher of milk once a week to make sure it's still sweet. End of sermon. BB

To: Grantcw who wrote (10225)	11/13/1999 11:31:00 AM
From: Dr. Id	Respond to of 54805

QCOM's run has put me back into this full-time market monitoring mode. So what can I do about it? I can ride out the storm, monitoring QCOM day and night until it's fundamentals change for the worse 10 years down the road, or I can take advantage of this short-term run to sell some shares and diversify to lessen the relative value of QCOM in my portfolio which would hopefully lessen my stress/time spent watching QCOM. I would then diversify into other Gorillas & Kings (GMST looks interesting). Is this wrong? Am I the only one here thinking this way? I don't think that you're wrong at all. I bought some Q back in April (as everyone but Lindy, not enough!), but also have stock in CSCO, INTC, RMBS, AOL, VTSS, NTAP, and now GMST. While I would be a lot wealthier if I had gone all Q, I also know that ANYTHING can happen to a single company. (I should add that these other stocks have for the most part done pretty well...) I have held stock in companies that had accounting irregularities, unforseen problems in shipments, unforeseen competition, all taking the stocks way DOWN. I feel much more comfortable knowing that its unlikely to financially ruin or disable me if one of those events happen to one of my companies. I may not make as much as the 100% Q folks, but I do sleep pretty well (though I wake up every gddamed morning at 6:30pst with an eye on that gddamned CNBC!) Jeff

To: Grantcw who wrote (10225)	11/13/1999 11:44:00 AM
From: taxman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

one way to reduce your stress is to buy a 2002 leap put. i know they are expensive in absolute dollars but not in relative terms considering the volatility. look at it as insurance. [note--buying a put may impact your holding period for long term gain]. regards

To: Grantcw who wrote (10225)	11/14/1999 2:23:00 PM
From: piscatologist	Respond to of 54805

timing the Q vs. buy and hold. i have got to vote with the rest (of the posts i've read so far anyway). buy and hold is less stressful, and of more importance, more profitable. i was there! my broker allowed me to buy 200 shares of msft at ipo. after doubling my money in a relatively short period of time, i sold. i rationalized it by such excuses as "i needed the money for my business", "there are other doubles out there just waiting to happen". anyway i left somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million on the table (it is too depressing to even look up again)! that mistake did help me hold on to emc since 92 (split adjusted price of 57 cents). however, the initial purchase was only 100 shares and doesn't even come close to making up for my msft blunder. to the point, my advice is "hang on to your gorillas with both hands and add shares if you can afford to".