Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Learning To Invest Correctly - A Shared Experience -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Druss who wrote (3)	7/24/1998 1:22:00 AM
From: Bill Ulrich	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 253

"Relative Safety" bit me in the butt. Here's a portfolio move I made last year that made sense at the time. In the end, however, I really hosed myself. What did I do wrong? How would you have played it. January, last year, I sunk money into an Israeli ADR called Nice Systems (NASDAQ:NICEY). They're involved in an area I know quite a bit about, digital recording systems. The risk was high as the stock really does fluctuate with political activity in that geographic area. Plus, it was a very young, developing company. Still, I understood their tech, and knew they had an edge on their competitors. 5 months later, after a 35% gain, I put the proceeds into ADPT. NICEY was still doing well, but I wanted something I thought was more safe and stable. My reasoning was that ADPT had a long unbroken string of profitable quarters. They had a strong lock on their market (SCSI peripherals). I wanted the "apparent safety" of a more established company. Plus, they had a diversified product line, and had the top products within those lines (CD-R software, for example). The stock was in a downtrend and seemed a good value. After about 4 months, I had a gain of about 63%. Then, Fall came -- ADPT started falling gradually. "No problem", I thought. They had survived some woes that the correlated DD sector was having. They still had a solid business. Then, Winter came, and I took a one-day hit of 40%, and then it just continued to get worse and worse. NICEY, meanwhile had continued climbing through the year, to the tune of about 160%, and even now hasn't been hit too hard by the market downturns of the past several months. They're still way ahead of where I started. Alas, I'm way behind from where I started. Is it just a simple case of being too greedy, or is there a more specific answer as to how this could have been turned around to my benefit?