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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Calladine who wrote (37203)	9/11/2000 4:13:37 PM
From: mitch-c	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Your post is one that I could have written. It captures my impressions of my own strengths and weaknesses better than I 've been able to. Thanks! My own greatest difficulty is in countering my own negative tendencies, which are: -- be too much of a bottom fisher -- be too early buying -- being too fearful of the short term market activity, yet: -- not responding quickly enough to trashings of entire sectors based on very little substance I, too, have come up empty while bottom-fishing (TRMB @7 in 03/99 is one that got away) and gotten Ginsued by falling knives. However, on your last two, I've been fairly effective buying option contracts when I figure that herd opinion has diverged from operational reality. Just like wind gusts on a lake, they shove briefly (but strongly) until they settle back into the prevailing direction. Let's see ... this last "tech correction" was triggered by a usually respected analyst (PJ's Kumar) who took a high-profile negative stance on Intel. The ripple effect took down most other chip-related companies in an emotional stampede. For AMAT specifically, the max-pain points (an unscientific indicator of near-term price moves) have been fairly steady at 85 - Aug 00, 80 - Sep 00, 80 - Oct 00. I treat those as a loose central tendency indication. So Kumar's swift kick to the industry took AMAT down - already with an options-influenced tendency to move downward - two weeks before Sep options expired (expiration on Sep 16). I'm guessing we'll see a rebound this week to finish in the high 70's/low 80's, close to the Sep max-pain point, again based on central tendency (this time upwards to 80). In fact, I've grabbed some cheap Sep and Oct calls based on that guess. <g> - Mitch