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

To: Larry S. who wrote (37435)	1/3/2001 6:55:29 AM
From: tinkershaw	Respond to of 54805

Larry, The time to bail was at NASDAQ 5000 then NASDAQ 4000, ie, bail near the top. By the time we end up in the pits you are usually just better off hanging on and waiting for the recovery. I think one thing to look at is the macroeconomic picture. Is there something structurally wrong with the economy that makes it look like good economic times in the near future are not likely? The answer is no. Nothing is structurally wrong with the economy that Greenspan hasn't created. What Greenspan created he can hopefully uncreate (including both the boom of late 1999 and the bust of 2000 with huge inflows and then outflows of money). On the Fool I wrote about buying the market on Jan 1, 1928 and comparing what happened to investors who just held on until 1935 and those that sold out. The problem is that those who bailed probably bailed about 1/2 way into the crash or later. Invest $100 on Jan 1, 1928. Bail sometime in 1929 or 1930, you have about $50-$60 left. Try to retime the market and end up missing the largest chunk of the recovery (the largest gains in the market happen in very short periods of time. Miss it and you've missed most of it). By 1935 you have $70-$80. Compared to persons who just held on. By 1935 they had $105. Yeah it sucks for returns. Point being, even in this very extraordinary and dire situation selling nearer the bottom than the top and trying to retime your entry just adds injury to insult. (1) you lose money in the drop but manage to bail (2) when the market does recover you miss out on the bulk of the returns as you try to detemine if it is just a dead cat bounce or the real thing. Just my opinion. Particularly if the money you have invested is for the long-term. This is not the first market crash. Investors in the 1987 crash holding MSFT were better advised not to bail on that fateful crash day and just continue holding. Moral, the time to bail is usually before the big crash. If you can do it somewhere near the top then more power to you. For the majority of us, we will end up bailing more near the bottom. Lose a ton of money on the way down, and then in an effort to re-time the market miss a good portion (if not the majority) of the rebound when the market finally does recover. Since I believe we are much closer to a bottom than a top, and that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the economy so that it should not recover in short-order (ie, the 1991 recession), and that over the next decade all fundamentals look better than they looked even in the late 1990s, I think your money is best left in the gorillas and gorilla candidates and kings because there appears to be a lot more upside than down. But that is from the perspective of a long term horizon. If you need the money now indeed we may go lower. Tinker P.S. The depression analogy is just that, an analogy. The numbers are basically accurate, but it should also be noted that had you not bailed in 1935 after getting your money back you may have been in for a rough next 10 years or so. We are not anywhere near that situation (dispite some sentiment) so I am just using it as an analogy to put the current situation into perspective from my point of view.

To: Larry S. who wrote (37435)	1/3/2001 7:05:00 AM
From: shamsaee	Respond to of 54805

I had a similar experience as I went through the same thing with qcom most of this past year.I watched Qcom go down and further down. I only got myself out of the mess by averaging down and selling other stuff to buy q in the 50 and 60s and had almost 85% of my portfolio in q till december. It was really frustrating watching other stocks recover from their April crash and Qcom going further down, However looking back in nov/dec when everything fell apart qcom actually went up.I Ended up selling half my shares before I went on Vacation for a small profit and walked away from the year with a small loss in my total portfolio. The stocks you have listed are all solid companies and I hold all of them with the exception of JDSU and INTC and EMC. IMHO ,It is definitely too late to sell and you should just stick with them and this selling will pass. If you have some cash you might want to look at averaging down. Look at it as a expensive lesson that will be well worth it years from now and learn from your mistakes.I spend my last amount of cash yesterday and feel quite content with what ever the market does in the short term.

To: Larry S. who wrote (37435)	1/3/2001 9:16:51 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

Larry, I can't tell from your post whether you are concerned about the long-term fundamentals of Gorilla Gaming, if you are having a difficult time emotionally dealing with the volatility, or both. If it's the volatility that is bothering you, I believe it would be prudent to trim your stock positions and move some of your assets into cash. Nothing is better than sleeping well at night. Otherwise, I'd suggest that you tough it out. But the IT slowdown, There will always be periods of slower and higher rates of growth. We all knew the economy couldn't keep growing at 5% annually with no negative side effects. Though we might indeed have a recession (after all, we haven't had one in a decade!) right now the evidence is that we've got a slower rate of growth, not negative growth. And even if we do have a recession, LTB&H causes us to hold through recessions because we can't successfully, repeatedly time when to get in and out of the market. But the ... general market deterioration Only Chaz can repeatedly know what the general market is going to do and when it's going to do it. Staying in over the long haul not only keeps you in the market during that 8% of the time that you must be in to make money, but it also defers payment of capital gains taxes that would otherwise dramatically erode your life-long returns. But the ... economic malaise is leading to a very difficult investing climate. Again, if it's difficult emotionally for you, that's truly understandable. Adjust your tactics if it is. If it isn't, stick to your strategies, whether they're based on GGaming or not. Best of luck to you with your decision! --Mike Buckley

To: Larry S. who wrote (37435)	1/3/2001 11:25:37 AM
From: ratan lal	Respond to of 54805

You might want to look at this list of "worst stocks of 2001'. I just got it in my e-mail and have no opinion but i will read it a few times again to see if it makes any sense. quotes.freerealtime.com

To: Larry S. who wrote (37435)	1/3/2001 2:35:19 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Larry, what is happening as I post this is a perfect example of why you have to stay in. I was down 1% for the day when I left to go to the market. I came back to find that I was up 16% due to Greenspan finally cutting the interest rate. This may just be a bear rally, or we may be on our way back up. I think the second, because the economy is still good, and our gorillas are undervalued, IMO.

To: Larry S. who wrote (37435)	1/3/2001 3:35:10 PM
From: techreports	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

My problem is that given the current market, and the likelyhood that we will continue to see sharp declines in these stocks, it is getting very difficult to endure the daily losses from holding these stocks. The declines don't bother me. I bought RBAK at 72. I was somewhat unconvertible buying at 72, mainly b/c in April and March it was lower (the 55 range and happily bought 50 shares and sold at 170 ;)). That said, Redback is doing more in revenues and introduced a new product. I guess the real reason it doesn't bother me, is b/c i own some real dogs and they just continue to drop. So it's either hold my dogs or sell them and buy some SEBL, BRCM, QCOM, or JDSU. I rather lose money in JDSU then in CMRC. But the IT slowdown, general market deterioration and economic malaise is leading to a very difficult investing climate. It's not the end of the world. IT spending WILL CONTINUE. yes, believe it or not. Just started investing in 1999, but from what i heard, they were claiming Cisco's router sales would just fall of the planet in 1998 and no one would want routers anymore. How can we go into a depression when the DOW and the S&P are holding up? The dot com bubble is gone and we'll feel the hang over, but with-in 1 year i'd expect IT spending to take off again. I mean, how many people in Asia are online? Probably a small percent. These people will need JDSU. They'll need CSCO, ect.. WOOOHOOOO...i bought BRCM at 78 and SDLI 148 this morning. Also bought like 6 shares of RBAK at 35.5 yesterday ;) My average price on SDLI is now 195...was really thinking about buying SEBL, but i hate making quick decisions. That said, i'm expecting the worst. I'm going to expect us to retest the lows and hit 1800. If we don't retest the lows then i'm happy. If we do..well i was expecting it. ;) btw, i'm emotionally dealing with stocks with high market caps. Having a hard time deciding if that's the best place for my money. Then again, everyone knew about INTC and MSFT in 1996, yet they continued to rise. Hopefully the same thing will happen for JDSU and QCOM. I start questioning my self when i begin to watch the stock market too much. P.S. please no one claim that this is going to be one of the 10 best days of the year to be invested in the market. To early to claim that stat..

To: Larry S. who wrote (37435)	1/3/2001 5:51:43 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

I understand that GG requires a LTBH philosophy, but am getting very tired of 10% daily losses. At what point is it better to sell, or sell part, step aside, and re-enter when the overall market conditions improve. I have owned some of these stocks inthe past, and bailed, just to see them turn around and post huge gains. well, today gives you your answer: you should sell when you can predict near-term market movements sufficiently well that you buy back at lower prices, or when you don't mind the remorse and lost gains that stem from unexpected upside lunges. tekboy/Ares@tothemoon,Alice.pov