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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PMS Witch who wrote (36602)	1/15/2000 3:37:00 PM
From: Ex-INTCfan	Respond to of 74651

<OT -- common sense> PMS Witch, re: >I read somewhere that most people run out of courage when their portfolios reach 300,000. It seems this is the 'sweet spot' where people turn their back on the strategy that got them this far and become nervously conservative with their investments. Many spend the rest of their days pondering what could have been.< No question that a larger portfolio than one is used to causes one pause. For me, I started to get nervous when I hit about $800,000, and indeed made some stupid decisions. I've since gotten used to the big dollar swings, made better decisions, and watched my portfolio continue to grow. One strategy people might want to consider (although I never tried this) is to remove a decimal point from each of their positions if they are using a spreadsheet to track their portfolios. Thus, a $40,000 investment in a stock is seen to be a $4,000 investment, and a drop of $400 seems like nothing, and a $3,000 drop in a $30,000 portfolio is much esier to take than a loss of $30,000 from a base of $300,000. If that doesn't work for someone who is getting nervous about trading with more money than they are used to, the person might want to consider picking a few good mutual funds and ignoring the business news and stock quotes. In addition to agreeing with your point, the six points the original poster make make a lot of sense. However, the third point needs some embellishment. I believe it is a good idea to keep a growth stock until the story changes dramatically to the negative, or the stock becomes too large a portion of one's portfolio. The point at which a position becomes too large will differ for each person, and possibly by stock. I'm much more willing to hold a large chunk of MSFT than I am to hold a large chunk of YHOO, even though YHOO also is a fine stock. If I were a few years younger, I might feel differently. INTCfan