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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: t2 who wrote (20231)	4/10/1999 7:07:00 PM
From: Srini	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

t2k: re: <<If there was no Microsoft, i would not have bothered to invest in individual stocks. Would have a bunch of mutual funds and that would have been it. Obviously, no posting on SI. No monitoring of stocks on the internet. No nail biting time when holding options. No CNBC all day.>> Almost like my life story<ggg>. It's true though. I got started with individual stocks in Feb '95, when my wife was ticked off by the phenomenal returns of one of my colleagues (in ORCL).We liquidated both our IRA's which were in a bunch of Fidelity mutual funds and plunked the whole thing in MSFT (because I thought Win 95 was going to be big).Pretty much did the same thing with Intel with most of my Keogh. My wife felt that we were overexposed to tech and decided to keep her Keogh in Dow type stocks (not a bad choice in that time frame). Our 401k's have limited investment choices available and are sitting in s&p 500 index funds. My "private" (non-retirement) investing involved a lot of (ignorant) short-term option trades in the beginning, with a lot of undeserved success (beginner's luck). As you well know, the returns were phenomenal, (as long as things were going my way), but when the tide started turning, my wife reeled me in(just in time before I got into big trouble). I am very big on Leaps now, and in a retirement (tax-deferred) account it is almost like owning the stock but with much greater leverage, since there is no tax consequence when you have to trade up to higher strike prices. Even in a taxable account, I find the leverage make it worthwhile to have to trade out before expiry, compared to holding the stock. Do you agree? Srini.