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To: Dave Gore who wrote (4136)	11/9/2000 2:12:17 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 8925

Can I throw my two cents in too? 1 - The market has been wounded for a long time, simply looks for catalysts to move down and nothing is really supporting any up move. So this latest move is likely less about the election and more about it being a convenient catalyst. 2 - chartists don't normally care about fundamentals, with the exception of being aware of when a major event is going to take place and noting how that may play out on the chart at hand - and preparing trading decisions (of which standing aside is an important and apparently most-forgotten decision!) 3 - just for myself, since January I've held very little overnight except for energy stocks, and even those are just a tiny bit of my portfolio. With the tech parabolic run up it was easy to apply some history (past such run ups) and look at the results. In every case, the market / sector went through a painful bear / consolidation period. For a long time. Picking bottoms, particularily in tech stocks, in such an environment is an invitation to be wrong often, because the trend is still down. Buy, sell, hold - depends on your temperment, knowledge and skill level more than anything. Those that can't stand missing out on any sort of upside will invariably be buying all the way down. Those 'gunslingers' that bet too big will get crushed by margin calls, invariably selling out at or near the bottom. Skilled position traders might be playing bounces with limited capital but are not under any illusions about "the bottom" being in until after it has proved itself. The average Joe or Jill who is buying mutual funds is going to take their losses and stick it out for the long run. Do they have any other choice? No, not unless they choose to get the education and commit the time to it. The average speculator hasn't stopped buying and holding, and for every buy that turns into a loss, convinces him / herself that its now an "investment". Looking across the threads you can see that many self-proclaimed traders are now holding an awful lot of "investments". When my barber asks me what to do I decline from answering. The right answer for me is not going to be the right answer for him. Buy, Sell, Hold - a question that can't be answered for another person.

To: Dave Gore who wrote (4136)	11/9/2000 2:32:15 PM
From: Lane Hall-Witt	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 8925

Dave: The Bush people have two problems. On one hand, there's a moral issue: should Bush concede the election to Gore? At this point, with people demonstrating in the streets and a national uproar ensuing, this must be regarded as a serious consideration. The ballot confusion was clearly very real -- regardless of whether the ballots were approved in advance, or whether there were sample ballots sent out, or whatever -- and the votes at stake would easily hand Gore the victory. On the other hand, there's an issue that's both legal and political: if the Gore people ask the Florida courts for a re-vote, they'll ultimately win. I don't know if they've got a case on the law, though it sounds like they do, but the political fact of the matter is that Florida's Supreme Court is made up entirely of Democrats. The state officials who are overseeing the election are all Republicans, which is why they keep insisting that the ballot was fine and the recount should be decisive. But what is an all-Democrat Supreme Court going to do when the appeals process reaches that level? It's perfectly understandable that the Bush people would be a little nervous at this point. Their only hope is to turn public opinion against the process of investigating all of these problems in Florida, with the objective of driving Gore to concede the race for the good of the country. This is why Bush is already acting like he's the President-elect, instead of waiting on the bureaucratic and legal systems to do their work; he's trying to establish the inevitability of his rule so the country will wonder why Gore is trying to game the election. However, it sounds like the Democrats aren't going to be bullied on this, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear Gore people start saying that Bush should concede the election over the next couple of weeks. A Bush concession is my bet on the ultimate outcome, for what it's worth (very little!).