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

To: Tom Trader who wrote (23039)	4/18/2000 10:46:00 PM
From: Mrjns	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

I truly believe this post & similar ones are fakes posted by shorts to instill fear. I am not saying there aren't investors wiped out by margin calls but I have seen multiple posts like this with similar writing styles & CRA, XLA and such others where they are the only holding in a portfolio (sheesh !) otherwise it'd be hard to make a portfolio go form 1 K to 100 K and back to 0 in a few weeks. Bottom line : Novice (nervous) investors on margin are the potentially gullible targets of these messages and disseminating them during marlet turmoil helps only the scammers IMHO

To: Tom Trader who wrote (23039)	4/18/2000 10:58:00 PM
From: saukriver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

"On Margin" Very extended on margin in Spring 1999 and learned that I personally did not like that much risk in the tech downdraft of April-->June 1999. I dialed it back and have kept my margin amount in the 5-10% range, using it, for example, to buy more QCOM in late 1999, repaid with stock for which I wanted to delay the sale event into 2000. Heard a gripping story today of an individual who bought MSFT at $115 on margin. Paid $100K in margin calls and then the brokerage called on him again and then liquidated 2000 shares of MSFT at $79 last Thursday. Loss=$92K + interim calls of $100K. Thanks to the exhortations of uf and Mike Buckley, among others, I retired my margin debt by ditching some shares of a company I had been wanting to exit. That occurred at about its peak in today's trading. I won't say that I think being "on margin" is wrongheaded in all circumstances. I don't belive that. I don't fault anyone for making an informed decision to buy on margin. Margin is but a tool, a very tricky and possibly dangerous one, that must be used with care. But I have few observations. First, the phrase "on margin" is very unusual; akin to "on drugs" or "on life support." It speaks of a dependency. Second, the cost of avoiding margin is the opportunity cost that you will not grow your portfolio quite as fast. Compare that to the cost of misusing margin where you can be left holding shares with very few (if any) buyers and debt. Under one scenario, you might not retire as early (for example, to live the life of Lindy). Under the other scenario, you might burn up your holdings and not retire. saukriver