Mostly: Classical

[Canuck Dave]

Playing the Naz in the bubble days.

Well, first off, I played it all wrong. In 1998, I bought an internet play and watched it go from 20$ to 5$. Nearly wiped me out. In January 1999, I was ALREADY expecting a tech crash and had all my money in a propane stock. It doubled overnight when taken over, and I was on my way.

Got brave enough to buy a silly little thing called Microforum in the tax shelter, and damned if it didn't triple in a week. Then Infowave (there were very few tech plays in Canada). By July 1999, I was real scared of a crash and mostly stayed out after hitting the jackpot with HSAC (which subsequently went belly up).

In 2000, I nibbled and nibbled at Tech stocks, trying to pick turns, and lost a lot. By September 2000, I was a silver bug. Finally started making money again in December 2001 after meeting a fella named Claude Cormier. I can't say enough nice things about CC.

The lessons?

1. Nothing wrong with backing away from 300%

2. In a bull market blow off, the sky's the limit.

3. There's no experts at those times. Over on SI, we had Tokyo Joe (fraud), A@P (fraud), Tim Luke (dead trying to rob a jewelry store), my old friend Trader J (who got sucked into some questionable plays taking us newbies with him), and a whole raft of people selling information.

4. Do your own thinking.

5. I would summarize today's markets as "The daughter of all bubbles". I'm O-U-T of tech. There's another crash coming. Who knows when or how, or how it will affect PM stocks.