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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (52979)	9/4/2004 2:58:17 PM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hello Jay, <<If the market is going up, the majority is doing it, etc.? That's downright poetry. So clear and beautiful a picture! But alas, alas, if we stop thinking like artists but rather like mathematicians then "going up" turns out to be a muddy concept.Do we mean for 3 minutes? or 3 days? or 3 years? Remember those glorious days of Softbank? The thing zigzagged its way up to a towering height. All of us held on, spurred by your dream for it, in most part. I think neither you nor I sold at the absolute top because no bad news had emerged at that point. As soon as the first bad news appeared we bailed out, not worrying about whether in so doing we were on the side of the majority or the minority.A strong case can be made for looking at the fundamentals of the situation. Buffett, no trader, did all right. Of course he didn't have a day job so he could go and visit the presidents of the companies etc. We don't have that option. There's some validity to the general case you are making, I'm sure. I just can't ferret it out clearly. We should in general be going against the tide. There is however for us people connected to a taxing jurisdiction the tax benefit of holding on for long period as long as the company is prospering.