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

To: Sam Citron who wrote (59357)	1/24/2002 8:36:40 PM
From: Tito L. Nisperos Jr.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Sam, RE: “ … when did you first invest in AMAT?” During the late 70s in the year when AMAT went up 250% (the following year another 100%). I saw it on a list of about 35 Silicon Valley stocks in the San Jose Mercury News. I had an account then in Merrill Lynch for beginners wherein one can invest as little as $40 for fractional shares. I spread my money among those Baby Tech stocks including INTC, AMD, ROLM, Avantek etc and did very well, 100 dollars here, 300 dollars there … —- with just Guts and Instincts guiding me. At one time I poured all my money ($15K) on AMAT, and if I only held to this day would have grown to MultiMillion dollars in value. Unfortunately, when I learned how to calculate P/Es —- did very Poorly, losing money each year ever since. I went to Gold and other sectors without much success all the time watching AMAT, INTC and the like grew and grew without my having the guts to admit I made a terrible mistake in abandoning them because those Paid Analysts kept on saying and I kept on believing them that Tech stocks were risky (and those guys are still saying such things today!). Then in 1994, decided once and for all to concentrate on AMAT. I still believed in those Paid Analysts that time using P/E and Technical Analysis for guidance. Until that time when I “ … agonizingly watched AMAT climbed from 63 to 120 … “ doing nothing because of P/Es and Graphs. I sold AMAT because the P/E was 20 —- 2 points more than the 5 year historical P/E of 18, then watched in horror as the P/E expanded to 37 and more! Now the Historical P/E is from 4 to over 400! Then I realized Paid Analysts are there for the Big Money people, for Brokers and their big clients —- not for me and other small investors.. They are there for short term traders —- 12 month forecast is really 12 days to 12 week forecast. They Flip-flop anytime they want to —- leaving their followers puzzled and orphaned. Then I remembered how I used to do well during the late 70s using just Guts and Instincts, Unfortunately, my IRA which was valued more than $100K that time lost 77%. in 1996. Then, out of frustrations, I discovered AMAT LEAPs. I fondly called those LEAPs bought when AMAT was at 23 near the Low in 1996 as —- “Leaping out of the Alamo LEAPs.” What I did was converted those AMAT stocks into LEAPs and by the time AMAT went back to 38 (from 23) —- turned the 77% loss into a 30% gain. I made a lot of money by the time AMAT reached over a hundred. That feat was repeated in the Bull Market of 1998-00 and I hope to repeat again this time. I did give back some of the gains in each of the 2 Bear Markets just past. I'm happy to know, my story about AMAT LEAPs narrated in this Thread helped a lot of people. I just wish them Luck again this time. My advice is if they don't do Big time this year, there's another year —- Roll Over the investments. Keep on trying and trying!