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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: willcousa who wrote (50212)	8/6/2001 12:18:09 PM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

I'm not telling you to slavishly follow George Gilder but he always provokes thought in me and he might in you. As far as has he been creamed? So have I and I don't own a single thing he has recommended. How are you doing? If we truly believe in tech we are all creamed. With my personal investment account, I am about even for 2001 and I lost about 15% last yr and was up about 34% in 1999 so not bad. The portfolio I manage for my newsletter did 117% in 1999, lost 11.5% in 2000 and is up 10.3% as of this AM. Could be better but better than a stick in the eye. 8) Key was rolling profits out of tech into under valued areas like strip zeros, bond funds and financial stocks in 2000 as I sold small parts of my tech portfolio every time they went up more. Everyone was saying we were in a bubble, my theory was to try to ride it like a wave and pull off profits but know the wave will eventually break and I'd be down well off the high, but still up considerably over missing the great gains in 1999-2000 (actually, great gains buying LRCX in the Fall of 1998 helped a good deal too.) I think the lesson of the market has been diversity. My Excel spreadsheet was screaming at me to keep buying more of my small cap value fund that had ZERO exposure to technology with my profit taking dollars. I was also caught up in the mania to some extent and didn't put as much as the allocation model said I should have had there, but the money I did have there is still significant and the mutual fund did 18% in 2000 and is up 18.8% YTD this year (FLPSX). It is REALLY, REALLY hard to sell or take profits in securities that keep going up and getting more and more overweight in our portfolios but this technology bear market should teach us a lesson. My guess is it might be much like the 1987 technology bear when many of my stocks lost 50% and took quite some time to pass the old highs once and for all. Take a look at HWP, SUNW, etc from the 1987 high to get an idea... Kirk