Cosmic, WOW!
I wonder how all those dark clouds are mine when they are all emmanating from your keyboard. I mentioned no such 'forboding disasters'.
There is a common strategy employed on these boards that I call the 'Ostrich maneuver'. It is most commonly presented as a denial of misfortune based on the 'fact' that an investor has not yet 'realized' his actual losses by selling his shares at the current market price. He maintains that because all shares carry the potential to go up in price eventually, his holdings still maintain their original value. Sort of, 'if I don't awknowledge the current market value of my stock then I can maintain my pipedream'. It is akin to the premise that an ostrich, by sticking it's head in the sand, can deny any danger because it can't see the approaching lion.
While the strategy is intellectualy nonsensical and practically unsupportable, (try to suggest to your banker that the value of your portfolio is not related to the current market price. lol) it is nevertheless a comfort to it's practitioners and they should continue to use it if it helps them sleep at night.
It should not however, be twisted into something that it is not in an effort to convince others that the strategy is sound. The roulette metaphor was such an attempt.
The roulette metaphor, while accurately representing the investment as a gamble, fails to account for the declining value of the wager during the period that the ball is spinning.
Let me elaborate.
Under normal conditions if you bet a dollar on a number on the roulette wheel and your number comes up, you will win 36 times your bet. Bet a dollar win 36 dollars.
At any given instant, while the ball is spinning your dollar bet is STILL worth a dollar up until the ball stops spinning. At which time it is either gone or replaced with your winnings. My suggestions of pausing the game in mid spin was merely trying to capture this point.
In the current investment scenario, however, your 'dollar' is NOT still worth a dollar. During the time the ball has been spinning the original investment has been reduced to a fraction of it's original value. It's as if your stack of chips gets smaller and smaller as the wheel spins. When the ball stops you will only get the benefit of whatever wager is left. If it doesn't stop spinning soon, you will have to hit your number just to get your original bet back.
In summary, regardless of your avoiding the issue, you have lost a significant amount of money on this investment so far. That you chose to hide behind an accounting trick to avoid awknowledging that fact to yourself is your perogative. Good luck with that. Unfortunately your attempt to spin that denial into a different and inappropriate metaphor has run into a bump in the road.
regards,
frog
