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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Ox who wrote (50625)	1/5/2011 10:55:46 AM
From: Sam	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95652

RtS has been a champion of the concept that keeping a large stash of cash on the sidelines, waiting for the "once in a decade" opportunity to come, looking for the chance to buy as the market was in a huge slide/bear market. That is a great idea, one that I personally have "championed" as well. But man, is it ever hard to actually do! Did I jump in with both feet in late 2008? No. I was scared sh_tless. I did make some nice buys, but I had cash on the sidelines that remained on the sidelines until much later, until the late summer/early fall of 2009, by which time plenty of stocks had already tripled, quadrupled or more off their lows! The problem with "once in a decade" opps is that they are that way for the same reason that virtually all of us will be frozen with fear. By definition!

To: The Ox who wrote (50625)	1/5/2011 11:39:20 AM
From: Return to Sender	2 Recommendations Respond to of 95652

Buying at Bear Market Bottoms is an opportunity that has happened actually about once every 4 to 6/7/8 years. Obviously it's a lot easier to know when to buy when looking in the rear view mirror but I have done okay while taking little risk since 2002. I've turned 300K into over 800K (Yes there have been some contributions made but not to my trading account which has grown from less that 100K to over 350K) while risking only a small portion of my large horde of cash because I was too damned scared to fully invest at any time during the last 8 years. I could have done a lot better! At the last market bottom I expected a retest of the lows which never came leaving me with a lot of buys that I had made too soon and was underwater in and a failure to buy before stock truly took off with way too much cash. I still am losing money on a number of those investments. Others I did great on them and sold. Some prematurely. Some I'm still well up and have yet to sell. But rather than discuss that lets see if we cannot determine a method of truly cashing in when we hit the next Bear Market Bottom opportunity. And it is coming! True maybe not this year as the market has been up every third year in a presidential term since 1953 but it will happen. How can we tell a bear market bottom is actually forming? First we have to get a market top. That won't happen until we get record volume. The retail investor will have to come back to some extent and be fooled into believing it's safe to throw their money at the market. Add in the ever increasing levels of programmed trading and smart money selling to the retail investors and it will happen. We have not got a top yet. What we have is a market churning on low volume. We are hitting some new highs but market breadth is not as healthy as it used to be so this bull run is getting more mature and closer to slaughter. I will provide some charts as soon as I get the time. RtS