To: Rande Is who wrote (23437 ) 4/5/2000 5:58:00 PM From: Joe Smith Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Rande--Now that things have calmed down, I just thought that I would prod you again on what you mean by Long-term or core holdings. I mentioned in an earlier post that you have said that you have liquidated most if not all of your core holdings both last Spring and this one. Yet you also have also encouraged us to keep a core long-term portfolio that far outweighs our swing positions, with the swing trading used to beef up our returns. I am just a little confused on this and would love to get a philosophy lesson from you. As I earlier said, I had to put together a large down payment for a house, so I sold deep into my holdings, over 85%. Using your philosophy as I may have misunderstood it, I probably would have sold 66%. Anyway, I was very well-positioned to pick up some bargains yesterday even though I still had held some stocks through this correction. I slowly added, took some losses on stocks that I had added too early in order to lower my risk and I feel pretty good. Still lost a little, maybe a week or two of my March gains, still left with gains from February and January. Anyway, had I liquidated everything and gone 100% cash, I clearly would have been even better off. Is there anything worth keeping LT in this market, even our rats? Do you consider core postitions to be ones that you hold and leave alone as long as the market is advancing, say 3-6 months at a time? Clearly 1/5/2000 was a great time to add stocks if you sold during March, but just as clearly, yesterday was a better time to add on many, many of our favorites if you are building a long-term portfolio that you buy and hold. All of the 1/4/2000 portfolios have given back most of their gains. Some have tanked badly with a few big winners like LPTHA, ARTT, etc mixed in with a lot of losers.
