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To: dougjn who wrote (14777)	9/10/1998 1:10:00 PM
From: JMD	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 152472

doug, actually I've been running a little experiment with myself: purpose being to figure out if SI-type forums are a help or hindrance to stock market performance. Basically, I was trying to figure out how the world looks through "non-SI eyes". Motivation is that I've made some really horrendous picks lately; question therefore becomes is my portfolio looking like swiss cheese because the tech sector in general got blitzed or have I cleverly conjured a way to make a bad situation worse? Results are inconclusive thus far. It seems clear that some very bright folks which includes the dudes on this thread + LOR + GSTRF + Bernie Schwartz + Soros just got bagged big time. Beyond the financial pain, it just upsets the hell out of me when smart folks get nailed. So did our brains get warped by our cyber-collaboration? I personally only know 2 guys who seemed to see this clearly: Ramsey and a bud of mine in Portland who liquidated his portfolio in May and bought Treasuries and S&P Puts. Heartiest congratulations to both. I bought a fair hunk of LOR @13 many moons ago and was looking like a genius in the mid-30's. As of today, I'm either a dufus brain or presented with what some call the 'diaper theory' of investing: which sez you buy when everybody else is peeing in their pants. I need to analyze this further as the picture is anything but clear. Owning a heavily biased tech stock portfolio is clearly not for the faint of heart and I have an almost religious conviction about "NO WHINING" so the volatility is not what I'm bitching about. It's not as if I didn't know that the frigging rockets might not blow up, but my research said that launch risk was in an acceptable range, that we spent billions of taxpayer dollars in the 60's, 70's, and 80's to perfect this technology and that we ought now to reasonably expect a pretty comfortable success rate. Instead, the damn things seem to be fizzling out everywhere--Deltas, Zenits, doesn't seem to make any difference. I am well aware that S&P just downgraded Iridium's debt, Ken Starr just played his trump card, and Japan continues to fumble at an alarming rate. It's never terrific to turn 12 multi-million dollar birds into cannon fodder, but this was one lousy time for sure. I have carefully considered the notion that Bernie was merely trying to avoid the Leonid November meteor parade, but that seems unlikely. Anyhoo, I ain't doing nothing just now--not buying, not selling and while 'doing nothing' can sometimes be exactly the right thing to do, I'm uncomfortable with it at this juncture. Sorry to be so jumbled, but clear thinking is somehow eluding me. Best Regards, Surfer Mike