From: Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Date: Thu Dec 09 1999 - 00:58:46 MST
At 09:10 PM 12/8/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Harvey and Max are both right if you are considering a stock for a long
>term investment, long term being more than a day or so.
>
>If you can execute a trade extremely fast you can buy on the news and
>sell a short time later for a nice profit.
This is hard to do successfully, but for those who want to try their hand,
here's a promising case: Friday's IPO of VA Linux (LNUX). Given the
performance of companies like Red Hat and other Linux companies, the fact
that LNUX has a real business, and that it has "LNUX" as it's stock symbol,
IPO day should be very interesting. I suspect despite having jacked up the
initial offering price by 100%, it will still open up 200%. It might be
very hard to buy and sell the same day at a profit, but if you like to
speculate (I don't) this should be a fun one. It might even make a good
one-three month hold.
BTW, I did *not* specifically say that you should *never* buy on good news.
This can make sense if the news alerts you to a company that you then
research, become convinced has much more good news ahead, and jump in even
at a high price. (E.g. QCOM, EXDS, INKT.) Some great stocks have never been
cheap--MSFT, CSCO, etc., yet have way outperformed the market. I also think
it is possible to "buy high and sell higher" successfully, but only by
applying rigorously mechanical investing strategies that take the emotion
out of the process. These can be highly volatile, but the good screens
should excellent returns back tested for 13-15 years.
Onward!
Max
(Portfolio now at 103% YTD...)
Max
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