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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Defrocked who wrote (11014)	12/6/1997 12:36:00 PM
From: bearshark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

Pancho Villa, Staff, and Defrocked. I think many of us on this thread have learned their own survival techniques through their trading. Each of you have hit on things that I have leaned over the last 28 years. Here are some of my rules that have worked for me. Some deal with my personality and they are just as necessary for me as any others. Sorry, it is a bit long. I do not know why I am so chatty all of a sudden. First, my comfy retirement has already been assured. In addition to that, I have an IRA and a sorta IRA--neither of which I can easily get at. One can always use a little extra spending money in retirement. I can always sleep at night. Second, I have three investment pools. Cash, long-term investments, and good old trading money. The amount of the good old trading money never changes when it is in my hands. Profits from the trading pool go to the cash pool awaiting investment at the right time or directly into the investment pool. Each long-term investment has a reason and as long as reality is consistent with that reason, my investments remain--or else they are out the door and the proceeds are into cash. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. Discipline. Eighth. Discipline. Ninth. Never take advice. I did on my first "investment" in 1969 and the company went bankrupt. Never had that problem again. Tenth. Use a broker that knows to keep their mouth shut when you are talking to them. I have had the same broker for 28 years. I see him, I talk to him, but he has never seen me. Eleventh. Never tell anyone about your specific holdings. Act stupid if someone wants to talk about stocks and walk away. Twelfth. Never make a mistake. Trades go wrong, markets go against you, but there is never any reason for mistakenly taking a position. If I do bad research, use poor technique, trade for no reason. etc, I am making mistakes. Thirteenth. When you lose the feel, walk away. I walked away from trading in the mid 1980s. I simply lost it. My investments just kept making money though. But now I am back.

To: Defrocked who wrote (11014)	12/7/1997 9:32:00 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

Sign of the times: Asian stockbroker sells sandwiches to survive (and shortly on a corner near you) Copyright c 1997 Nando.net Copyright c 1997 Agence France-Presse BANGKOK (December 6, 1997 8:47 p.m. EST nando.net) - As he fumbles in his plastic cooler box, sandwich vendor Siriwat seems light years from the high-flying life he led as one of Thailand's top stock market wizards. The former head of a securities firm who once made more than $380,000 a month when Thailand boasted the world's fastest growing economy, is lucky these days if he makes a few hundred. "I've had my ups and downs on the stock market and suffered during the Gulf War and during public unrest in Thailand, but it's never lasted so long before," Siriwat Voravejvetakuth said. "At first I thought I would weather the storm as I had the others, but things have been sinking steadily for almost three years -- including the stock market index which has dropped from 1750 to 380 points." Heavily exposed to the now deathly property sector and the sliding share market, Siriwat -- who owns a fund management firm -- now sells sandwiches for a living to pay his staff of 20 workers. "I could have afforded 10 Mecedes Benzes and even a private aircraft, but now it's back to basics, back to the simple life, back to plain old survival," says the jovial 42-year-old. But the economy slowed and Sirwat looked for another business opportunity, one that proved disastrous: property. "I built luxury condominums, but as they were completed early this year, suddenly the millionaires who were to buy them were not rich anymore and couldn't afford them." But Sirwat is not alone in his tumble from the dizzying heights of seemingly unlimited wealth, to an abyss of mounting debt and slowing business prospects. This weekend the resourceful entrepreneur, who with his remaining 20 employees launched himself into the street catering business in a bid to pay his salaries and service his huge debt, set up shop in the "weekend market for the formerly rich." The Bangkok bazaar attracts once flush middle-class Thais who are trying to discreetly sell the trappings of the glitzy lifesyles they can no longer afford as the country sinks to its lowest ebb since World War II. On sale are goods ranging from luxury cars, to watches, to the occasional light aircraft and even a hovercraft. And more are joining them, especially as the government prepares to announce on Monday the fate of 58 suspended and technically bankrupt finance firms. Most of the companies, which approved huge loans mainly to the property sector, are expected to be closed leaving their already cash-strapped middle-class employees in the job queues. The once-rich shares guru sets up his cooler box -- which bears a cartoon scathing of the International Monetary Fund rescue of Thailand -- on a cart and peddles the 75-cent sandwiches to all who can still afford them. "Some of the people who come here know what it's like to see your life and fortunes transformed," he said. "It's true that at this rate it will take me 100 years to pay off my debts, but at least I'm alive which means there is still hope for me." The slump, sparked by the wild lending and spending of the 1980s and 90s boom years which saw a rich middle class spring up in only a matter of years as Thailand roared as an Asian "Tiger" economy, has hit all Thais. But the middle classes, who raced around Bangkok in sleek and fast German cars feel it perhaps harder than others. "Things had come too easily," the Nation daily said at the weekend. "big salary raises, tremendous bonuses, generous creditors, skyrocketing property prices. "In the blink of an eye, multi-millionaires have become Cindrellas without a pumpkin." By MARC LAVINE, Agence France-Presse