Posted by RH on 31/January/2001 at 00:03:
In Reply to: SCI_i_bought 50000 shares today(becuse i beleive the company)(nm) posted by tiger61 on 30/January/2001 at 22:50:
There are many cases. For example, many hundreds of millions of people believe that Jesus was the son of god, and many other believe that he was not. Many are willing to put there lives on it, such is there faith, but it is a fact that at least one opinion has to be wrong.
The thing with shares is that you can't even be sure of the facts. Too much is hidden from you or lies in the future or with uncertain things. (Look at the how profit warnings have come out of nowhere). Everbody "believes" that they are right to invest in a particular company at a particular time, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
Follow your beliefs by all means (I'm sure you have backed them up with some hard research), but you must be prepared to accept the fact that you may have got it wrong. This is probably the greatest lesson to learn on the stock market. In practice means that you should have some strategy at least for limiting your losses.
In the stockmarket, faith is for fools. No prizes for being the last one of the ship.
IMHO, investing in bombed out tech stocks is usually a good strategy though, although its pretty hard to pcik the bottom.
I bought Misys at 15p in 1991 and still have a holding. I have a fair amount of respect for the management(I have met them), but I am prepared to drop them if things get dodgy.
RH
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