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Strategies & Market Trends : The Covered Calls for Dummies Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (1188)	6/24/2001 8:58:18 PM
From: BDR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5205

<< Nice to see you back>> Thank you. I have been away for two weeks and away from the computer for most of three weeks. One week for mostly business (professional society meeting), one week vacation, then one week of increased work load to make up for the previous two weeks off. Most of that time I was happily unable to follow the markets. There were a couple of times when stocks did come to mind. Once was after riding Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain with my kids. (I said mostly business) 255 feet up followed by a drop at a pitch of 61 degrees, accelerating to 85 mph, passing at times through pitch black tunnels, complete loops, pulling several G's at the bottom of the dips followed by heart-in-the-throat "air time" (negative G's) at the tops until you return right back where you started. sixflags.com That is a pretty good description of my last two years in the market. The other time was in the National Park Service auditorium in Skagway, Alaska, where I heard a great presentation by one of the Rangers about the Klondike Gold Rush of '98. The prospects of getting rich quick in the Klondike were hyped by numerous newspapers of the time in order to boost circulation (Cramer and other online flaks), individual towns boasted that the most direct route to the Klondike was through their metropolis (brokerage houses), and merchants happily sold goods and services to the prospectors at inflated prices (merchant bankers/VCs, financial software writers). Within two weeks of the arrival of the ton of gold in Seattle in 1897 that set off the stampede, passage on a steamship to Alaska jumped from $50 to $500. Sounds like an internet IPO. The poor stampeders discovered upon arrival in the Yukon that all the productive claims had been staked out by prospectors who had been on the ground in '97 (Venture capitalists, management with generous stock options at pennies a share). Most of the new arrivals, if they survived the ordeal, returned home poorer than when they started. Some worked for those with established claims for a daily wage. Some continued to pursue the next strike, whether it was in Nome, Fairbanks or wherever, always arriving late and never finding the wealth they pursued. They few that did find significant wealth usually spent it rapidly or lost it on the next speculative frenzy. It all sounded very familiar. One hundred years later and human nature is the same. Who needs tulip bulbs. Just let me take my place in line at the Chilkoot Pass. (g)