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To: TobagoJack who wrote (3518)	5/9/2001 11:18:57 AM
From: TD	Respond to of 74559

Jay, This will help those tech investors... herald-trib.com td

To: TobagoJack who wrote (3518)	5/9/2001 4:12:55 PM
From: smolejv@gmx.net	Respond to of 74559

...this is meant as a response or support to Jay's statement of evident truth, namely "that most on SI are equally adept at being geniuses over the past few years". I posted it some time ago -in 97 I guess - but lost track of the original URL, so I just rewrote it. At that time it was just a natural, pristine reaction of a (fresh) freshman to a bull market. Here I go now (again)... As a kid I used to to go to the mountains in the winter. Once, twice a season. Hard climbs to say 5000 feet, six hours to the hut, that had to be thawed out, warmed up, made livable... Skiing in knee-deep snow. Cold... It was (evidently) quite some fun. We were a loose group of acquaintances, with an inner hard-core and then some newcomers (you do fall in and out of love now and then for instance) who dropped in, stayed or moved out. With the night starting five o'clock, no power and no TV we played a lot of games. One of the absolute musts every time was the game called "matchstick". It could be played only once - because after that point the game was blown for the season -. The game was very simple and could also be termed plain stupid: a candidate - of course one of those not in the know - was told that he/she seems to have extraordinary psychic powers and that the game will try to prove it. The only thing he/she is requested to do is to figure out, when he/she returns into the room, who among the people present has a matchstick in his or her hands. The person was then sent out to cool for a minute and wait for the call to come in. The rest of the gang made some simple preparations for the killing and then invited the person to come it. Q: who's got the matchstick? Usually it took them betwen five to ten minutes to make a guess and you know what? They guessed it right! Again, the person was sent out, and on the second try, cant believe it, they guessed again! There was a remarkable change between occasion 1 and 2 and later - they started to move with grace, with a stride in their steps and a vibrant strength in their voices, they KNEW that the force is with them! We never went beyond try four, because we soon got fed up with exploding egos; the stupid, harsh, prosaic fact was that no wonder everyone of them guessed right every time - we all had a matchstick in our hands. The market was skewed, it was playing games on the poor sucker, it made a king out of everybody. I will not talk about their reactions when the plot was uncovered, its immaterial. What made me write this story in 97 (and makes me write it again) is the memory of their postures, of their faces... They were so damn similar to what I (and a lot of others) saw in their mirrors in bull times.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (3518)	5/10/2001 12:51:17 AM
From: epsteinbd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Mr Jay Chen. The most profound piece of literature I have read on SI this year. Well thought, informative, philosophical in a positive way. A letter from a father. No, a master! Thanks Epstein

To: TobagoJack who wrote (3518)	5/10/2001 3:48:45 AM
From: pezz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi Jay, well I must correct a few misconceptions.... <<You feel young, free, wealthy, smart, fortunate, and invincible. You are the symbol of one historic moment,>> First [I see CB kinda beat me to the punch here ] at 57 I'm probably older than your self.....But I must agree to a degree you do describe how I feel ......I hope to preserve [ in all honesty to myself ] the "historic moment" as long as possible.I have,though , <sigh> realized that invincible I am not.Nor do I consider $500k wealthy.. << So, when your style stops working, you will no doubt switch style, right? >> I don't think so..Too much time invested in said style....I would prefer to believe when that time arrives I will do what most on this thread are now doing....Wait for better times. <<lack of responsibility should not be used to justify an investment style. >> Perhaps but the presence of responsibility should.And since I no longer have that responsibility I am free to chose an investment style that suits me. I apologize if my reference to dollars was misconstrued. It was meant to convey that I have experienced the rags to riches and return to rags thing....That is some have seemed to imply [ even yourself ] that I didn't know the trauma of loss. Percentages would not have conveyed this. <<You are wrong about losing because you have not lost … yet.>> Having gone from 50k to 500k 3 times was meant to demonstrate that I went from 500k to 50k twice...I know loss.It did not break my spirit however.Nor change my lifestyle. Nor did it <<making the whole exercise superfluous>>...Remember my reasons for doing this. Besides being of obvious intelligence I'm sure that you can realize happiness is different things to different folks.For me your island paradise could never compare to a weekend camping, hiking and fishing at the bottom of my beloved Owens River Gorge..And it's free! <<take another girl you also adore, ....in the winter, to Boracay. >> I took her on a pilgrimage to the Beaverkill River for a camping weekend and it was never better. Now if I made real money I would build [ with my own hands ] a solar home onna mountain top nearby a trout stream. My whole point was why not risk the 500k? It alone will not change my life style. As to my track record I do not consider it conclusive one way or another as yet. But I must add that <<made some money, by taking some risks, when there were none>> Is not at all accurate.In 1999 when the NAZ did all that wonderful stuff 60% of all NASDAQ stocks were down for the year...And although 2000 was full of risk it was my best year ever.I am a stock picker [small caps] and sink or swim with the success there of. I must add that small caps have been at risk for many years now. I drool at the thought of them coming back in style.