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To: xstuckey who wrote (1715)	12/10/1997 4:18:00 PM
From: steve goldman	Respond to of 12617

X-man, 1. Assuming you didn't put all your money into the market at the recent highs, you wouldbe willing to accept a 3 point slide in IBM because you might have 70+points in it since, because you bought it for a midterm (18mo to 24mo) investment, you didnt sell it when you got a few points in your pocket. The past few weeks have been rough for long term players, especially tech lovers, but the gains over the past few years, if you were in on them, should easy you pain a bit. Sure your account went from x to .9x but it would have not been at x, but rather .3x without the bull's move from 5000 to 8000 in a short year and a half. 2. You point is based on the assumption that you can be successful (although from your posts, you seem tohave your head in the right place). The argument you seem to bemaking is that long term investing is more risky than short term , intra day trading. Clearly you can go home with 100% cash if you have the discipline. IF you don't days like today ruin the year. I justdon't feel that in anyway can you say that day trading is less risky than proper investing. The rewards, a few thousand bucks on a 100k account, are great but I have never seen a curve where as reward went up, risk went down. Nonetheless, truly great traders, those that cleanedup today, probably feel that way about their position on the curve and thats why they do it. I have a lot of points in Lucent, Dell, IBM and a few others in my long term portfolio. Today, I simply gave some back. very similar to when IBM jumped 17 points after it had great earnings about 3 qs ago. My mutuals, well, they have done exceptionally this year. Its not me. Its the market. You did not have to be a genius to pick winning mutual funds. But add it to my success with short term trading (although, as I have said, I just don't sit and day trade but have responsibilities that keep me from do it as well as I would not want to do this.) and you end up with a very well balanced portfolio. For example, today my long stuff got crushed, I think I am down like 3% ormore in the long portfolio, but I probably made that back and then some trading. Yet on days where the market gaps open and simply rockets higher and I can not trade (because I don't like buying on gap openings) my long term stuff does wonderfully. Again, I feel that even for short term traders looking to make xx dollars on a 100k account (or any other size account),a ceratin portion should be allocated to long term investing, where research, longer term market timing, product, earnings, rations, etc. are applied. Diversification, in whatever form, is important. Great recovery today. some stocks came back very, very nicely. We shall see. Tommorrow could be a nice pop at the opening...if we dont' get like 7 more large tech stocks prereleasing bad earnings. Regards, Steve@yamner.com