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Strategies & Market Trends : Technology Stocks & Market Talk With Don Wolanchuk -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mongo2116 who wrote (15253)	5/3/2004 5:09:44 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 207031

We should cut Nicky some slack, his losses at least decelerated today. Thank goodness one of his positions is positive at least. trendvue.com But really, we should not cut him slack for this performance, since in the time span since the close on Apr 28 to today, the COMPX has shed only 2.56% compared to Nick's 8.34% incremental loss for a total of an %18.10% loss for his "positions". A hint for Nick, you only want to outperform the index with price declines when you are short, not long. I really do hope the market bounces tomorrow so that Nick gets a chance to lighten his holdings at better prices, and also to hear more FIZZ talk. Positive lesson in all this - even if Nick ends up being "correct" and markets power to new highs in the months to come, does simply believing ones own BS constitute a suitable investment methodology? I don't buy my own BS - every position I have gets a protective stop minutes after being filled. I don't care if its a trade that I expect to hold for minutes, days, weeks or months, a stop and an appropriate place goes in. Frequently they are hit and its no big deal. Being wrong some of the time or most of the time is par for the course. Even if Nick ends up being generally right, he still suffered a theoretical portfolio loss of over 20% in the space of a week last week -- that is not "noise" by any rational measure. Allowing such concentration in a portfolio is not prudent either. Failing to protect winning positions and allowing them to turn into losing positions is not prudent either. And, if Nick ends up being generally wrong, then the whole dug into his account might amount to the equivalent of a mortal wound.