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Pastimes : Ask Mohan about the Market -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekgk who wrote (10622)	12/9/1997 6:56:00 PM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18056

Thanks for another look at that chart; if history repeats oh my my my. Having lived (and invested continually) through the 1969-1982 period I tend to forget the general drift when you factor in the inflation. I wish i had kept an investment journal, but what I recall is urging my parents continually to get out during 1968 and 1969. At one point 25% of their net work was tied up in Polaroid that was hitting $145 a share, and their bank to which they were moving their assets kept telling them to hang on to it, along with ITT, ADT, and everything else. I finally convinced them to get out of Polaroid as it passed $90 on its way down to something like, was it 17, and out of ADT. After I was out of debt in 1970 I made my big plunge, buying a convertible bond (because even Merrill Lynch only charged a $5 commission) for about $850; I sold it some months later for $1,300 and bought a telescope.All through 1971-1974 I was socking away the maximum in a 403b account and keeping it in a fixed account that paid 7 and a half percent. My $7,000 or so accumulation I moved into the stock fund in stages late in 1974. When it was worth $13,000 the next year I took it out, but put it all back into stocks a couple of years later where it languished more or less until 1982. Meantime I was saving more and building up a margin account that I had 200% into closed-end funds (ADX, NGS, CET, etc.) that were discounted as much as 25% from NAV. Everything took off mightily in 1982. I became cocky some years later, got out of stocks and into precious metals and went nowhere but down. The point of this personal history is that when you are in the thick of things you lose perspective--and yes, of course you are right that anyone who bought in at the top in 1969 and held was hit by the double whammy of stock decline and a tripling of consumer prices between 1969 and 1982. Here's hoping we are seeing more or less clearly what's going on right now. At least some of it.