Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dealer who wrote (2561)	9/20/2000 12:44:28 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 65232

Doctors Remove Live Grenade From Soldier MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian doctors have operated to remove a live grenade from the leg of a soldier wounded in Chechnya, the armed forces newspaper reported Wednesday. Doctors and nurses performed the surgery clad in body armor and helmets, and draped flak jackets over the patient, who was hit by a grenade-launcher round in a battle near the southern Chechen town of Urus Martan. The grenade did not explode, but was trapped, still live, in his right leg near the knee, according to accounts in the military's official newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star). ``Military doctors had to de-mine Junior Sergeant Andrian Chebodayev,'' the paper said. The operation was carried out in an open field rather than inside a hospital, so that if the grenade blew up it would be less dangerous for the medical staff. ``We worked...in silence, understanding each other perfectly,'' surgeon Yuri Sikorsky told the newspaper. ``The de-mining experts warned us the grenade still had one live capsule, which could explode. Physically, the work was not difficult, but the moral responsibility was 100 times greater. We really wanted to save the guy.'' The surgeons removed the grenade and put it in a metal box for de-mining experts to defuse, the paper said.

To: Dealer who wrote (2561)	9/20/2000 1:12:32 PM
From: Dealer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Daily Speculations: Nasdaq's Rise Creates a Whole New Ballgame Laurel Kenner and Victor Niederhoffer, Columnists After calling yesterday's market rise ahead of time, the Speculators played it to perfection. It's a whole new ballgame out there. Nasdaq 100 shot up 4.8% in a single day. Seven stocks, SDL (NYSE:SDL - news), Intuit (Nasdaq:INTU - news), PMC-Sierra (Nasdaq:PMCS - news), Qlogic (Nasdaq:QLGC - news), Qualcomm (Nasdaq:QCOM - news), JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq:JDSU - news), Xilinx (Nasdaq:XLNX - news), Applied Micro Circuits (Nasdaq:AMCC - news), Juniper Networks (Nasdaq:JNPR - news), and Vittesse Semiconductor (Nasdaq:VTSS - news), were up more than 10%. Only one stock, Peoplesoft (Nasdaq:PSFT - news), was down more than 5%. Yes, we did find ourselves singing our favorite market song, ``Stocks Rallied Just In Time.'' In the tradition of Capablanca who started his primer on chess with the scores of seven games, all of which he had lost, we have not been sparing in reporting some of the sorry trades that Vic has made on previous days. For example, there was the day he traded the S&P on four consecutive losing sides during the same day and was not even able to get his shoes on. So perhaps it will not be considered overly vainglorious to report that Vic picked up some Nasdaq futures three points from the low and traded out of them 15 1/2 points from the high in a nice day of trading. We report this not so much in an attempt to memorialize this (please note to our surgeon's great consternation, Vic played some tennis on his fourth day after surgery) but because Vic has never in his trading career involving many hundreds of thousands of trades been known to take out more than half of the profit on any move. And thus the mistress's attempt today to follow the fantastic rally of yesterday with a feeble down open should probably be taken as a deceptive gambit in the Let's Pretend the Bears Are Still In Control play book. At a time like this it is well to recall Kipling's Poem ``If'': ``If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same... If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch. Then, you are a man, my son'' In this connection, please consider again the wisdom of 84-year-old Mr. Almar in which he says, ``I've been in the market for 40-50 years, have some poor holdings and speculate on a few low-priced issues with the dividends from the poor holdings.'' What a beautiful model for the young hearted among us to follow. First to tip the hat for the sheer curiosity to the man who at 84 fixes himself up with a system that can generate timely Internet columns. Secondly, the emphasis on a buy-and-hold strategy forming the roots of the portfolio, thereby tapping into the annual 10% to 15% random returns available from buying stocks. Presumably the stocks that Almar has been holding for 30 years have given him at least 5 doublings and are now selling at 30 to 60 times what he paid for them. Next the implied money management in using 3% to 4% a year of the portfolio to speculate on risky issues thereby preventing oneself from running into gambler's ruin should all these stocks dissipate to zero in an October 1987 kind of debacle. Finally, the dollar averaging involved by using dividends that occur relatively continuously throughout the year available to buy stocks even after the deluge. In short, this homespun philosopher has probably hit upon as close to an ideal system of investing as is possible in this world. After our highly spirited tribute to the activity in the old-hearted homes yesterday following the shellacking they delivered to the young-hearted and their humorous put-down of us as ``heat-seekers'' (which all of our members have adopted as their motto) last week, it would be inappropriate for us to expand upon the proverb ``In like a lion, out like a lamb.'' However, as far as we can tell there has been no rally to date during the last 12 years that has been of sufficient strength or resilience to change the frame of reference and we are certain that yesterday's feeble ``dead-cat bounce'' will not be the exception. The enclosed note from James Goldcamp, a rugby playing researcher and systems developer from Cincinnati puts it all in perspective: ``...has anyone noted that the use of 'heat-seekers' implies that this cult will follow the 'hot' stocks right into cyclicals if that is where the momentum is. He will no doubt be even more agitated if the so called 'heat-seekers' profit in the future from his favorite sectors. I think the 'new-economy-thinkers-cult' or the 'technology-admiration-society' would have been a better derisive term for him to use. Defining his adversary as 'heat-seekers' may leave them with too much flexibility to adapt to a changing market.''