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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Big Bucks who wrote (20946)	6/28/1998 1:19:00 PM
From: 16yearcycle	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 70976

"Just think, 2 years ago 90% of investors would not have had access to the information that is available now except in monthly publications or from analysts." That is true; there is much more information to process. Until Dec 1995, I functioned for years using Value Line, S&P, and sending for annual reports. So in a case like Applied's, I would have easily held off buying until 2x book or 1.5x sales or a pe below 10, since those were historically good entry points. There is no way I would have touched it before then. Now I am an amateur economist, trying to interpret information from Asia, trying to guess the book to bill turn, comparing charts of Klic and Mu to see leading indicators, looking for stability in dram, reading all the fed reports, blah, blah, blah. I am not sure I am better off. I end up trading much more, I buy some unknown companies here and there which normally underperform the big boys, I didn't sell as much amat in september as I would have years back based only on valuations, and I get exposed to more insanity by reading more about companies like yhoo, amzn, ktel, cnwk, etc. Sometime in the next 20 years, there will be a devastating return to normalcy in the market: we will regress to the mean. Many of us are getting 50% returns year after year, and this has developed into an investing cult..we think we are geniuses. We are exposed to all this info, and see that we are beating experts, and beating them badly. But the only ones here that will profit in the long run will be the folks who grab their marbles and go home in time, before the tidal wave hits. My point is that all the extra information may surprisingly UNhelpful in the short term, and our inflated returns, which we think are occurring because of our intelligence and our access to more information, may only be happening because of one of the greatest bull markets in history. Our extraordinary performance has led to overconfidence, which is setting us up, and our economy, for a disastrous fall at the end of the day. Nevertheless, I am 180% invested since June 12th, and I have been margined since 1990, for all but about 15 days. This is an indication that my actions aren't being controlled by these thoughts.....yet.

To: Big Bucks who wrote (20946)	6/28/1998 2:48:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

BB: re: "Now even us small investors can compete on even footing with the large institutions" Unfortunately, that's not true. Yes, the internet has made a huge difference, and things are much better than they were two or ten years ago. Ten years ago, I would have listened to the evening business news ( 1/2 hour, on the days I got off work in time), and read the WSJ (takes about 10 days to get here), and read the quarterly reports. Now, I can listen to the conference calls, read the quarterly reports and the WSJ in real-time, and have access to all the data and insights of everyone on SI. A huge improvement. However, I'm still getting the news late, and it has nothing to do with technology. Example: Recently, I watched my BSX drift down 10 points. I searched for news, and asked the BSX thread, but didn't find out until the stock had completed its dip. Then, a post told me BSX was probably going to make a large and dilutive acquisition. By the time the news was in the news, the stock had made its move. (it's back up now). Example: I watched Intel drift down down down. Couldn't find anything new to explain it. Bought some at 74. Posted a long message on the INTC thread saying that I was buying because I thought Merced would be bigger than Pentium. Then, two days after I bought, the news came out that they were delaying Merced. It turns out that Intel had been telling the large box-makers about the delay, for a week before it became public. Obviously, the news got out to some people, but not to me. I tripled my stake at 67, and it's now at 76. Example: KLAC has been as weak as KLIC, evan though it's a much better company. Why? I won't buy KLAC till I know. Someone knows, and is acting on that knowledge. It is not a level playing field, and I invest based on the assumption that the institutional buyers will get the news a few days or weeks before I will.