Friday, May 11, 2007

Market Close 11-May_07


Well, I would have like to have enjoyed continuing gains (my stocks were still green) on SSL, OCR, but no one knows what the next day will bring. Nona, you are probably glad, today at least, that you hung tight.

One of BC's posters noted FXI. I thought I would post a 2 day chart. (CTML). Notice the extraordinary volume this a.m.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad that I "hung tight"? I think so.

That said, I would have done very nicely if I had done a lot of selling on Monday. Except...when do I go back in again? That's the challenge/problem/issue.

One possible reason that I "hung tight" is that, again and again, my biggest mistake has been selling too soon. On, the (presumed) dross that turned into gold -- once I left it behind on the table for someone else to sweep into his bag.

On the other hand, I was 100% out of techs about a year before the tech crash. Too soon again, one might say, but in the end, I was decidedly not sorry. I keep hanging on to that lesson, but wonder: have I hung on to the lesson too long??

Still, in the long run I think the best defense is buying and holding very good dividend-paying companies, riding the inevitable ups and downs, and buying more stock when the companies are on sale (i.e., during price decline that are, one presumes, not terribly long lasting), a lesson that a wonderful, generous tutor has been teaching me. Over time, some companies will lag, others will sprint -- and then the laggards will begin to sprint while the former front-runners slip behind for a while. One hopes to enjoy a good (hopefully, really good) overall portfolio performance over the years.

Below is a link to an interesting article in the Financial Times. I think the writer positions the dilemma for many of us (well, for me at any rate) very well.

http://tinyurl.com/37aomq

Anonymous said...

Oops.

The first word of the second paragraph above is "Oh" not "On".