"TAP não sobrevive se se mantiver pública", garante Pinto Luz

[The Mechanic]

Calma ...
Estava só a fazer-me de coitadinho ...
"...ah ...ninguem lê as coisas que eu escrevo...e ninguem gosta de mim...e os cães mijam-me prás pernas..."

Eu sêi que há muita gente que lê estas "Regras de Investimento " . É isso ou ler um dos 187 tópicos sobre a OPA sobre a PT que aí andam...as pessoas não têm muito mais hipoteses.


Aqui vái a regra nr.6 ...

Do your stock homework , vem-me muitas vezes à lembraça quando leio no Caldeirão ou noutros sítios : " Vou comprar a acção Zoing porque dizem que descobriram petroleo na sede deles ! " . O " dizem que .." é pra muita gente , um dos mais importantes factores de investimento .
Porque não ?! Se o Joe Beri-Beri diz que aquela acção é boa , no Jornal das 9h , é porque deve ser verdade , não é ?! Errado .

Eu tambem escuto o que as pessoas dizem e se em 100 pessoas , 80% diz que sim e 20% diz que não , então se calhar eu até posso ser tentado a tirar conclusões.
Mas , se um cromo ou casa de investimento , diz "Isto ?! ...é um miminho !" e eu até sêi que eles tem daquilo às pazadas , se calhar já não confio assim tanto . Prefiro aceitar rebuçados dos maus que estão à porta das escolas .

Esta cházada toda pra dizer que , não há nada como um gajo dar uma olhada no Site da empresa, ver o histórico da negociação em Bolsa , tentar ver o "todo" que é a empresa e depois , com base nos dados que são apresentados ( resultados, perspectivas, noticias, momentum em geral...) tomar uma decisão .
E depois , não pára ! Há que ir acompanhando , que a partir dali , não é só subir ..!
É o que este gajo chama de "fazer os trabalhos de casa "...

Rule 6.

Do Your Stock Homework
By Jim Cramer


My kids hate homework. They think it is punishment. Sometimes when I look at what they are studying, I have to admit that I find it easy to sympathize with them. What's the relevance of most of the things they study? How will it help them in later life? Why bother?

Of course, that's a terrible attitude, and, as a parent, I encourage them to study because I want them to do well, and because you never know what they eventually will be interested in.

I think many of you believe that the homework you do on stocks might be just as irrelevant to your own portfolios as schoolwork seems to my kids.

When I tell people that they have to listen to the Starbucks (SBUX ) conference call or know what the analysts are looking for from Urban Outfitters (URBN ) if they are going to own those high-multiple stocks, they don't want to hear it. They can't understand what a scold I am.

When I remind people that doing the homework could take as much as an hour per week per position, they look at me as if I am some sort of old-fashioned teacher who is asking for way too much in this busy world in which we live.

That's just plain wrong.

Where does the desire to own stocks with no research into the companies come from? It comes from two different views:

If I buy it and hold it long enough, it will come back.
I don't have the time -- no one has the time -- to be that diligent.
The latter point's easy to counter: You don't have the time? Give it to someone else. You don't understand how to read a balance sheet? Give it to someone else. There are lots of good managers out there who will beat you simply because they are at it every day and you can't be.

It's the first concept, though, that I find really needs debunking. Buying and holding became the be-all and end-all for many people in the 1990s.

"You know what? I am just going to hold on to that CMGI (CMGI ) because it has to go back to $100, where I bought it." Or, "Why sell Sun Micro (SUNW ) now? When it gets back to $70, I am going to sell it because all of the texts say that if you hold things for the long term, everything works out."

Huh? What text says that? I don't know of it. That's just a fictional contortion of what the texts say.

That's why I say: Before you buy any stock -- before you purchase Caterpillar (CAT -), before you buy Lucent (LU ) -- please, please, do your homework.

Listen to the conference calls. Go to the company's Web site. Read the research. Read the news stories. Everything's available on the Web. Everything.

But if you fall back on a buy-and-hold strategy for an EMC or a Microsoft (MSFT ), I can assure you that you will be soundly beaten by professional managers with good track records who are actively searching for good stocks all of the time.

Remember:

Buy and homework, not buy and hold.

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

[fanhecas]

Uma bela lição facultada por Mechanic, que Basiado em textos de Jim Cramer nos ajudou a construir ou a solidificar ainda mais valores transversais a qualquer que seja a area de negócios.
Li e fiquei por isso mais rico, é a vantagem de "conhecer" pessoas que fazem do seu tempo uma ferramenta útil ao tempo de outros como eu!

Abraço Mechanic e muito obrigado.

Fanhecas

Ps: até estive no teu blog, deu para dar uma bela relaxada na gripe que tenho thx any way!

[vitorigus]

Petar ,

...Pelos visto deves ser o unico leitor destas "regras do Cramer " , mas sendo assim já se pode considerar Serviço Publico . Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

Alto lá. mas eu também! E mais, hoje levei um dos textos do Cramer para as minhas aulas de inglês...para estudo.
Abraço p'ra ti The Mechanic
vitorigus

[acintra]

Como dizem "o saber não ocupa lugar".
Agora com mais tempo desocupado, pois aguardo melhores dias apesar de estar 100% dentro, é um previlégio ocupar o tempo com leitura muito interessante e elucidativa.

[rteixe01]

Petar ,

Grato pelas tuas palavras .

Isto não está pra grandes investimentos , mas está sempre bom pra aprender mais .

Pelos visto deves ser o unico leitor destas "regras do Cramer " , mas sendo assim já se pode considerar Serviço Publico .

Mech,

Eu também leio as regras!
Quero sempre ser melhor e aperfeiçoar os meus planos de trading.

Abraço

[PMPF]

"Pelos visto deves ser o unico leitor destas "regras do Cramer "

The Mechanic, de certeza que muito boa gente as lê.

Abraço

[Garfield]

Parabens pela iniciativa. Regras bem explanadas. Mais uma perspectiva, maior abertura de espirito.

[The Mechanic]

Petar ,

Grato pelas tuas palavras .

Isto não está pra grandes investimentos , mas está sempre bom pra aprender mais .

Pelos visto deves ser o unico leitor destas "regras do Cramer " , mas sendo assim já se pode considerar Serviço Publico .
Nestas alturas , há que tentar aproveitar pra "ganhar saber" em vez de ganhar dinheiro . Ganhar saber servirá depois pra ganhar dinheiro .

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

[petar]

Obrigado por consolidar estas regras Mech.
O gajo é doudo (um pouco como tu ) mas de vez em quando diz umas coisas (ao contrário de ti que dizes sempre algo útil )

Abraços,
Pedro

[The Mechanic]

Rule nr. 5

Nos tempos que correm esta regra parece ser redundante . Diversificar pra quê !? Se tudo cái . Mas é uma regra importante .

Eu acrescentaria apenas que , dependendo das carteiras se faz a diversificação . Se eu tenho 10,000 euros ...vou diversificar o quê ?! Meto o guito em duas ou três acções no máximo e é se "não quero andar a trabalhar para as comissões " .De outra maneira , se quero ganhar , tenho de arriscar tudo numa ou duas no máximo .
Se tenho 1,000,000 Euros então já posso diversificar . Aliás , DEVO diversificar !

Isto pra dizer que consoante a nossa carteira, será o nivel de risco nos investimento e a menorização desse risco atraves da Diversificação . Porque Diversificar é uma medida pra minorar o risco de perda de investimento , mas pode ser tambem um modo de aumentar a possibilidade de Capitalização .

Depois à aqueles gajos que metem tudo no Vermelho , sái Vermelho e dobram a parada num instante . Até um dia , quando sair preto...

Diversify to Control Risk

By Jim Cramer


If you control the downside, the upside will take care of itself. I have always believed that to be the case. But controlling the downside means managing the risk.

The biggest risk out there is sector risk. I don't care how great a tech stock was in 2000 -- even eBay (EBAY - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) and Yahoo! (YHOO - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) -- if you had all your eggs in that sector, you got scrambled. Same with pharma in the last several years. Or oil in 1982, when I broke into the business.

What can keep you from getting nailed by sector risk, which is about 50% of the entire risk of owning a stock?


Diversification.
It's the only investment concept that truly works for everyone. If you can mix up enough different sectors in your portfolio, you can't be hit by one of the myriad perfect storms that come our way far more often than you would think.

Why aren't more people diversified? Many amateurs don't know the stocks they buy. They end up with stocks that are frighteningly similar. When I started playing "Am I Diversified" on my radio show in 2001, I was blown away by how few people knew just how undiversified they really were.

I still field quite a few calls from people who genuinely think that owning Sun Microsystems (SUNW - news - Cramer's Take - Rating), EMC (EMC - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) and Microsoft (MSFT - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) is a form of diversification because they own servers and software!

They think that having Pfizer (PFE - news - Cramer's Take - Rating), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) and Procter & Gamble (PG - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) makes them safe!

And no matter how much I may like oil stocks at any given moment, I can't countenance a portfolio made up of ExxonMobil (XOM - news - Cramer's Take - Rating), Chesapeake Energy (CHK - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) and Halliburton (HAL - news - Cramer's Take - Rating).

An undiversified portfolio is not just an amateur mistake, though. Many professionals don't like to be diversified because of the bizarre way money is run in this country. If you concentrate all your bets in one sector and the sector takes off, you will beat pretty much every diversified fund out there. That's the nature of the beast. You then can market yourself as a huge success and get profiled by every magazine and take in capital from unsuspecting folk who don't know how much risk you truly are taking on.

Both amateur and professional are wrong; controlling risk is the key to long-term rewards and controlling risk means being diversified at all times.

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

[The Mechanic]

A regra nr. 7 do Cramer assenta que nem uma luva no dia de hoje , embora aqui se fale mais na descida de uma acção do que na descida do Mercado ( neste caso ,Mercados ) em geral . Pelo que há que aproveitar a oportunidade e meter mais esta regra .

Ás vezes estamos investidos numa acção ,aquilo começa a descer furiosamente porque saiu uma noticia escabrosa e um gajo entra em panico a ver a guita ir toda embora .
O rookie vende logo e vái para a casa de banho chorar .
O especulador vende logo e se calhar espera pra entrar mais abaixo .
O investidor nem se chateia . Movimentos diários ou de meses são peanuts no long term .Aquilo não é com ele .

Para qualquer um ,se for apenas a tal noticia escabrosa , há-de haver um "rebound" algures e é aí que se vái buscar mais algum prá reforma .Após o panico , vem sempre o momento do " ...e se ..!" .Toca a comprar !

No One Made a Dime by PanickingBy Jim Cramer

You see it over and over again. A stock gets hammered. People flee after the hammering. The market gets crushed on a huge down day. People leave at the end of the day. A sector gets annihilated. Quickly. People can't take the pain; they bolt after the annihilation.

Panic is the operating instinct in all of these cases. There's something basic and instinctive about panic, about the desire to flee. It might work when it comes to individuals and things that might threaten us physically. But it can't make you a dime. That's why I say:


No one ever made a dime panicking.
There will always be a better time to go, a better time to leave the table than the one brought on by panic.

Let's take a classic panic, a run out of Biogen Idec (BIIB:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) from March 2005. As soon as I saw the panic in that stock, I wanted to run the other direction; I wanted to buy. If you bought the heart of that panic, the $36 price, you could have made a quick 5 points. If you flipped it then, you could have gotten back in and already would have been up a couple for the investible side of the ledger. But by going up again, that stock made a mockery of those who fled.

We get mini-panics all the time in the market. We might have a mini-panic in Starbucks (SBUX:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) off a weak monthly comp number, or in Panera (PNRA:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) and Whole Foods (WFMI:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) off a couple of not-so-great months. Those down-5 and down-10 situations don't need to be chased or participated in. A better time to sell will come.

I want you to do something for me next time there is a panic. I want you to take the opposite side of the trade. When you see one of those high-speed routs of a sector or a stock, buy a little. Get a feel for it. See what I mean. The most rewarding trades you can make are those where the decks have been cleared out by panicky folks using market orders who just don't get that the exit doors aren't as big as they think they are.

Mind you, I am not saying that all merchandise that gets panicked out of is worth buying for the long term. I am saying that it's a rare day when a stock or market that is socked that there won't be some sort of bounce that allows you to get out at a better price than you would have if you just joined the fleeing masses.

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

[The Mechanic]

Pra quem investe a médio/longo prazo , esta é uma regra básica . Quem só faz AT ou especula em curto prazo , nem é muito importante . Quantas vezes não vimos já acções da nossa praça sobre empresas que não valem um chavelho a subir sabe-se lá porquê ?! E no entanto , vimos tambem empresas sólidas que apresentam um crescimento sustentável com muito valor futuro , mas cujas acções em certo momento (meses )apresentaram performances inenarráveis .

É aqui que se destacam aqueles que investem e dos que especulam sobre a valorização/desvalorização dos títulos .
Num ex. empirico ,eu como investidor posso dizer que a Brisa é uma excelente empresa pra investir uma vez que "sêi" que vái acrescer valor no futuro , mas se as acções já há 3 meses que só caem ,eu como especulador , embora os shorts sobre a Brisa sejam um bom negocio ,interessa-me é a Pararede que não tem lucros há 10 anos mas tem a cotação a subir 20% por causa de que se fala que descobriram petroleo nas instalações deles .

Buy damaged stocks, not damaged companies.
By Jim Cramer

Let's say Wall Street is holding a sale of solid merchandise that it has to move. And let's say you take that merchandise home only to find it doesn't work, has a hole in it or is missing a key part. If we were on Main Street, of course, it wouldn't matter. There are guarantees and warranties galore on Main Street. You can take anything back.

You can't return merchandise on Wall Street and get your money back. Nope, no way.

Which is why I always say:

You have to buy damaged stocks, not damaged companies.

Sometimes these buys are easy to discern. In 1998, when Cendant (CD - news - Cramer's Take) was defrauded by the management of CUC International through a series of bogus financials, the stock went from $36 to $12 in pretty much a straight line. Was that a one-day sale that should be bought? No, that was a damaged company. It took years for Cendant to work its way back into the hearts of investors. Some say it has never recovered.

But when Eastman Chemical (EMN - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) announced a shortfall in early 2005 because of a problem -- a fixable problem -- at one of its facilities, that 4-point dip was a classic panic sale, one that you had to buy. The stock subsequently moved up a quick 8 points when the division recovered in the next quarter.

Sometimes, the sales on Wall Street aren't as obvious. I got snookered in 2004 thinking that Nortel's (NT - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) accounting problems were a simple sale of a damaged stock, with the company quite whole. In fact, the company was gravely damaged by an accounting fraud, and it has looked doubtful the company would ever recover.

And sometimes the sale is so steep that it looks as if something's dreadfully wrong, when really the problem is something that over the longer term will go away.

How do we know if there is something wrong with the company instead of just the stock? I think that's too complicated a question. What I like to do is develop a list of stocks I like very much, and when Wall Street holds an en masse sale, I like to step up to the plate. I particularly like to be ready when we have multiple selloffs in the stock market because of events unrelated to the stocks I want to buy, a major shortfall of an important bellwether stock, or perhaps some macro event that doesn't affect my micro-driven story.

Of course, sometimes you just have to deduce that the company's fortunes haven't really changed, and the fundamentals that triggered the selloff (either in the market or in the company) will be something that will reverse themselves shortly. But you never know. Which is, again, why I think that rule no. 3 must be obeyed. If you don't buy all the stock at once, and if you take your time, it is more likely that you won't be left holding a huge chunk of merchandise when more bad news comes around the corner.

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

[petar]

Esta regra é importantissima. Já assim fazia o grande Jesse!

[The Mechanic]

A regra nr.3 é algo que muito importante : Não comprar tudo de uma vez !

Embora isto possa parecer contradizente com a regra nº 58 do The Mechanic : Enterrar tudo de uma vez , à bruta ! , não está errado .

Quando se entra numa acção , deve-se fazê-lo por etapas .Comprar 50% da posição agora, reforçar com 30% depois e por fim ir buscar os 20% lá mais adiante ( por ex. ) . Se o negocio correr bem , a confiança aumenta e o reforço blinda a posição . Se correr mal, não temos a pressão de ter um "all or nothing " entre mãos .

Isto é uma regra anti-ganancia . Temos de nos lembrar que não vamos , de certeza , ganhar tudo o que há pra ganhar em Bolsa . Concentremo-nos em ganhar...

Don't Buy All at Once

By Jim Cramer


No broker likes to fool around with partial orders. No financial adviser has the time to buy stocks methodically over time. The game is to get the trade on, at one level, in a big way. Make the statement buy. Get the position on the sheets or in the portfolio.

And from where I sit, that's all wrong. 100% wrong. Never buy all at once. Never sell all at once. Stage your buys. Work your orders. Try to get the best price over time.

When I first started out as a professional trader, I wanted to prove to everyone how big I was and how right I would be. If I wanted to buy Caterpillar (CAT - news - Cramer's Take - Rating), by golly, I wanted to buy it now, big, at one price, because I was so sure of how right I was. "Put me up on 50,000 CAT!" I would scream, as if I were the smartest guy in the universe.

What an arrogant son of a gun I was. Arrogant and wrong.

What should I have been doing? Following my rule that you don't buy all at once. If I wanted to get 50,000 CAT in, I would buy it in units of 5,000 over time, trying to get the best price. I would put some on to start and then hope to work my way down to get a better basis.

I no longer trade institutionally. I no longer trade "in size." But I still invest for my Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, and when I have a new name, I buy in 500-share increments over a day to get my several thousand share position on. I did it in a way that gave me a terrific price.

Why don't more people do it my way? Why don't people, if they want 500 shares of ExxonMobil (XOM - news - Cramer's Take - Rating), buy it in 100-share increments? I think it is because they want to be big, too. They don't want to waste their broker's time. The broker wants to get the trade done. I know my brokers hated it when my wife, who came in to run my trading desk, took orders like mine for CAT and then broke it into small increments and worked in over a day's time.

You must resist feeling like you are making a statement. I have bought and sold billions of shares of stock. Do you know how often I got it in at the right price? Do you know how often the last price I paid was the lowest and it was off to the races? Probably one in one hundred. And I'm pretty good at this game.

Resist the arrogance, buy slowly, even buy over a couple . It's humbling and it's right.

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

[OLDMAN]

(...)

ps _ Hoje tou-me a sentir o Confucio da Bolsa...

...

... mas ainda não "confúsio", ou já!?....

Abraço
OLDMAN

[The Mechanic]

Resolvi colocar a regra nr.2 ...
Achei que era melhor e lerem uma coisa importante e séria , ajudaria as pessoas a esquecerem o meu ataque de epilepsia , tanta era a baba que me escorria da boca pra fora, que foram os meus post de há bocado .



Esta regra é tambem muito oportuna , devido às duvidas que surgem nesta altura em relação aos impostos e até ao momentum da nossa Bolsa :

It's OK to Pay the Taxes

By Jim Cramer

No one has ever liked to pay taxes. As long as there have been taxes, people have hated paying them. But the aversion to paying taxes on stock gains borders on the pathological. That's why my second bedrock tenet for my 25 rules of investing is:

It's OK to pay the taxes.

When I went bearish in March 2000, I received a huge amount of angry email from people who felt aggrieved. They had bought, I don't know, Redback Networks (RBAK - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) or InfoSpace (INSP - news - Cramer's Take - Rating) because of me, because of something I wrote, and now they were being told to sell it.

Had I no regard for them? Had I no regard for how much in taxes they would have to pay because the gains were short-term? What was the point of making money in a compressed period of time when it meant you would have much less to show for it than if the stock were held long-term?

I had zero sympathy for these people. I had long ago made my peace with the tax man. I knew that some gains were and are simply unsustainable. Given, though, that so many people thought that if you bought and held, you always ended up with more than if you bought and sold, my discussion fell on deaf ears, an audience like the character in The Lord of the Rings, Gollum, who says, "I'm not listening, I'm not listening."

Anyone who held on to get the long-term gain then ended up with no gain at all. You obviated the need to pay taxes the hard way; no taxes are due when you sell at a loss.

It's important to remember that gains, any gains, can be ephemeral. It is better to stop worrying about the tax man and take the gains when those gains appear unsustainable than to ride things back to a loss. Stop fearing the tax man; start fearing the loss man. You won't regret it.

Bom fim de semana .

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

[1963]

eu também
Abraço

[petar]

Mech, foi pesado o "lunch"?

Abraços,
P

PS: Eu sou um dos teus dois leitores

[The Mechanic]

Uma dúvida: ainda não saíram notícias como "Mechanic sai da Sonae Industria" ou "Mechanic sai da Cimpor". Irão sair?

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie...
Não é minha política dizer quando saio das acções .
Gosto de dizer quando entro , e até me orgulho de em 85% das situações acertar no timing de entrada ( ...olhá cagança em máximos ! ) e dessa forma contribuir para colocar muito pão na mesa dos Portugueses ( ...passou-se ! ).
No entanto , volto a referir , o timming de saída pertence a cada um ( tal como o de entrada , naturalmente ) .
Se eu disser que saí de uma acção , há logo 0 ou até 1 gajos a saírem todos atrás de mim , como lider de opinião que sou ( ...agora é que foi ..! Isto é um bêbado a conduzir um TIR em plena Av. da Liberdade ! )e por isso prefiro não dizer quando o faço .

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

ps - ... no entanto , quando eu calo a bocarra e deixo de falar numa acção...ou estou só a gozar a subida ou devo estar a sair...é porque não há ali mais assunto.

ps2 _ ...algumas entro e sáio tão rápido que nem tenho tempo de soltar o vernáculo...

ps3 _ ...quando insisto numa , é porque , se calhar vale a pena . Depois posso sair e voltar a entrar caso ache que vái corrigir nem que seja por alguns dias .

ps4 _ ...mas normalmente , nem eu sêi o que faço .

ps5 _ Este ps é só pra bater o record de ps`s .

ps6 _ ...este é só pra ter mesmo a certeza .

[Charlie]

Mechanic,

Obrigado pela partilha de conhecimento valioso!

Uma dúvida: ainda não saíram notícias como "Mechanic sai da Sonae Industria" ou "Mechanic sai da Cimpor". Irão sair?

E, já agora, obrigado pela permanente boa disposição e criatividade - que sublimam os momentos de "rebentar por aí acima" e amenizam os de "rebolar por aí abaixo".

Abraço,

Charlie

[The Mechanic]

A regra nr. 2 vem 2ª-feira ...

Por hoje , medita no que o gajo escreveu e no momentum que atravessamos.

Pensa no nr. de notícias que tem saido recentemente : " Berardo sái da TDU " , "BCP sái da Altri " , " Rendeiro sái da JM " e pergunta-te : " Porque saem os institucionais de acções que estão a subir tanto !? " .

Ás vezes , nada pode dizer tudo . E o inverso ao mesmo tempo...

Vái lá "grasshoper" ...

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic

ps _ Hoje tou-me a sentir o Confucio da Bolsa...

ps2 _ ...terá talvez a ver com o excesso de digestivos...

[michael]

assimilado. estou pronto para a regra nº 2!

[The Mechanic]

As 25 Regras de Investimento do Jim Cramer, embora tenham muito do seu "bombastic speach " , tem tambem relatos de experiência que podem ser uteis a muitos dos que investem , sejam eles traders experientes ou não . A propósito de outro tópico , achei que sería boa idéia colocá-los aqui , um de cada vez pra não haver "overload " de informação .
Afinal de contas, ganhar na Bolsa , não passa só pelo trade puro , mas antes pela informação recolhida antes .

"Rule nr. 1 - Bulls, Bears Make Money, Pigs Get Slaughtered
By Jim Cramer



What would you do if I told you the Nasdaq were to go up 1,000 points between now and November? What would you do if I told you the Nasdaq was going to double by December? How about if I told you that after it doubled, you would then catch another 1,000 points up by March?

First, I think you would tell me that I was nuts, and not worth listening to. But what if I were so persuasive that you believed me. Wouldn't you want every penny you had in the Nasdaq right now?

Or would you say, "Nope, not for me, this one's not worth catching. I don't want the 1,000 points, I don't want the double and I certainly don't want that last 1,000 points. Way too dangerous for me."

From the way people talk these days, with sober intonations about the market, total sobriety, you would believe the latter. You would think that people would avoid that 3,000-point move like the plague. Because we know how that 3,000-point up move turned out, we know that we simply climbed the stairs to jump off the tower.

Yet, that's what happened six years ago, that exact same sequence. Knowing what we know now about how hard it is to make money in the market, I think we would regard ourselves as utter fools if we avoided that incredible move simply because we didn't have to jump off the tower of Nasdaq 5000. It wasn't inevitable.

It wasn't inevitable unless we are pigs.

Which leads to one of my absolute favorite adages:


Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.
Rules like that one -- simple, nonquant and yes, nonfinancial rules -- saved me in 2000.

These days there's plenty of revisionist history on the part of financial commentators, editors and occasionally even brokerage house personnel -- if they let themselves wax philosophical -- about what happened when the Nasdaq bubble burst. Those who tried to capitalize on it are now ridiculed. Those who avoided it are now held up as some sort of paragon worthy of Diogenes.

Hardly.

The truth is that for one year of our lives, the Nasdaq gave away money to those who were bulls, but after 3,000 points, the bulls morphed into pigs and everyone who was piggish got annihilated.

So often, when I bring this adage up, people ask me "How do you know when you are being a pig?" I know there's not supposed to be any stupid questions out there, but the answer is, frankly, you don't need me to tell you. If you weren't feeling piggish after we hit an all-time high on the Nasdaq in 2000, you needed a shrink, pronto.

Remember, my goal is to stay in the game. The people who got wiped out by the Nasdaq crash tended to be people who never took anything off the table, who never felt greedy, who got slaughtered by their own piggishness.

Unlike so many others I see and hear on television or read in articles, I have no regrets about liking the market during that period. To have avoided those 3,000 points would have been sinful. It would have been suicidal for a professional manager.

But it was my desire not to be a pig that kept me in the game in March and April of that year. That's why I remind people every day: Have you taken your profit? Have you booked anything? Or are you being a pig? Because you never know when things you own are going to crash. You never know when the market could be wiped out. You can't have certainty. At those times, you have only human nature to guide you.

Whenever I struggle with a stock in my Action Alerts PLUS portfolio because I have booked so many profits that I feel I don't have enough on my sheets, I console myself with the simple lesson of Nasdaq 5000. For example, I caught the oil move in a prudent way that made me a lot when it first started but couldn't make me as much later, simply because I had taken stock off because I didn't want to be a pig. That meant I would make less money than others who were in the patch. I accepted that, as I do every time I make the decision not to be a pig.

It's the price I have to pay for following my adage. It always seems a high price when things are going well, as it did in March 2000 when I sold so much stock.

Until I look back and realize that my desire not to be too greedy saved me so I could live to play again. "

Um abraço ,

The Mechanic