Rockwell Automation (ROK)

[bar1080]

Airlines were going to low cost jets in the 60s and were briefly hot. I bought and quickly lost on Braniff, my first stock.

Over the years I've mentioned that I met a prescient old man in the 1960s. When he was young he felt that air travel was the wave of the future. He put his money in several upstart airlines. Trouble was, that was 1929!

He was right; I was right. We both lost money. But I was learning how hard it was to outsmart Mr. Market. It was good too that I was a student then, with only a small kitty, and the subsequent years weren't The Depression. Putting money in an airline supplier like Rockwell would have been a better move, perhaps by a factor of 100X
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Caterpillar had a string of setbacks lately. Their Chinese unit overstated its inventory and thereby profits. Inventory consisted of hard to count things like... bulldozers! I could have warned them.

I no longer buy airlines and I worry about anything Chinese.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/01/22/caterpillars-580m-headache-and-the-perils-of-chinese-accounting/