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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (37329)	11/23/1998 4:08:00 PM
From: accountclosed	Respond to of 132070

Your original proposition: FWIW, a number of favorites, e.g., Pfizer, Lucent, Dell, are still not trading at their July highs. To me, that means that the rally still has a ways to go. is what I was responding to when I said it was a technical question rather than a fundamental one. Not much talk on this thread of new highs and whether the rally has further to go. This post by you is a dilemma that we all have. We don't know what exact values are and more importantly we have no clue what Mr. Market might do. This is what I was referring to as principle. You have to decide what it is worth to you and right or wrong act on that. It doesn't mean you are right if it goes down from here, nor wrong if it continues to go up. Risk is part of the equation. Do you believe your holdings are subject to risk here? Have you ever flown an airplane or sailed a sailboat? Think of the market that way. Heavy winds, cross winds, sudden bad weather, sometimes tailwinds pushing further along. Sailing is not an exact science. It is an art. It is an act of judgment how to compensate for the unpredictable chaos of the weather and the seas. When flying a plane into a side wind, you have to aim not directly at your target, but make an estimate of compensating for the wind. And constantly update your estimates. The point of investing is not at getting ever better at predicting how a thing like this will go exactly, but in finding your plan for the market and making your best judgment. No one's is perfect.

To: Ilaine who wrote (37329)	11/23/1998 4:26:00 PM
From: Schrecke	Respond to of 132070

CobaltBlue, PMFJI, but I share your pain to some degree. >>I am reading Al Frank's "The Prudent Speculator," he says you should sell when you think the stock is fully valued, but if I did, I'd be missing out. When I first started investing, stocks seemed to move in and out of their value ranges. And the above advice worked well. But here in the late nineties, when stocks go from highly valued to more highly valued, it is hard to trade them when they all seem over valued. If we do fall on bad times, then we should be in a market where it is easier to trade stocks based on earning potential and not momentum. >>I was kicking myself in the rear for not selling Pfizer not long ago, it ran up to 111, then back down to what, 106?, but now it is at 115? I sold a third of my Intel last week and as I type this, the market just flashed a new record close, and I am regretting my haste, but hopefully next year I will regret not sell all of it. >>I am reading the chapter on stop losses. I hope you do better on stop losses than I. I have never been able to make stop loss settings work well for me. My current solution to the current dilemma is to keep a good share of holdings in money market funds. Take care, Schrecke