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Non-Tech : QQQ - Nasdaq 100 Trust -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lifeisgood who wrote (705)	1/3/2002 2:48:25 PM
From: Michael Sphar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 840

Unfortunately you made an incorrect assumption. I happen to look at life as a basket of risks. I enjoy life and I enjoy risk. So to view an investment in Q as a "gamble" whereas an investment in SPY is an "investment" becomes a meaningless distinction to me. They are both risks, gambles or alternatively investments. Either can lose money, not make anything, or make something depending on timing. And one will surely make more money than the other when the final accounting is tallied depending on the timing. Volatility is the key to my bias. I happen to like it and look for it when choosing between investments (gambles). Q is the vehicle of choice, here on this thread and for my daughter's small amount of money. So be it. The big question is one of timing. You've estimated alternatively a return to 28 some time this year and a halving of value. So that would be about 20. I agree, these are reasonable extremes to the downside. I'd guess the downside to be less than either of those though based on my gut. So I'm estimating a potential current downside risk of 36. Now more to the point of the "gamble" what is the upside? And when? Why is of secondary importance to me but sometimes fun to talk about and seems of paramount importance to the pundits and talking heads, so some of that might be interesting too. Here is a chart that shows the comparative performance of some of these vehicles and the vix timer tool: finance.yahoo.com I am not looking for a return to "bubbleland" but a return to the trend that predominated in the decade before the 1999/2000 peak. Now if a minor "bubble" presented itself, I wouldn't complain though. Elsewhere you rather dismissively misstated as a matter of fact that "...most companies on the nasdaq 100 have not made ANY money lately..." This is a good way to impugn your own credibility. By my count 58 of the current Nasdaq 100 have reported profits for the trailing twelve month period. This after more than 6 quarters from the market peak and during an acknowledged recessionary period seems a rather positive statistic. Now maybe after Q4 earnings season passes into the historical record yours may become a fact but who knows until then? Yet I think this misses the obvious. When the turn comes, as it surely will, will profitability only stay at the 58% level or grow substantially broader and what will this impart to the tracking stock price? For as I believe, there is only a loose coupling between a stock price and the company(ies) recent profitability.