Herman School of Business
The $ 18,000.00 Breakfast!
If you go back and read the blog posting of January 2, 2008…written before the market opened that day, I predicted Apple stock would fall from its high. It hit over $ 202.00 on 12/27. It crashed down to $ 190.00 by January 3rd, mid-morning. I couldn’t resist, knowing the big Tech show is this week in Las Vegas and the earnings report is due out 1/22 so I bought 1500 shares. Surely the Appleloonians would rally the stock back up at least five bucks a share right?
There is a phrase used when a stock is falling sharply…never try to catch a falling knife…and I was burned on this old cliché as on the next trading day it fell to $ 180.00. For those keeping score that’s a fifteen thousand dollar loss in one trading day. That was Friday, the 4th. And I left Sunday night and flew to the West Coast to meet with the radio people handling the DAILY HERMANISM. The plane was almost three hours late and I arrived at my hotel here about 5AM, East Coast time Monday morning…with the market opening in just over four hours.
Not wanting to get killed further on an early morning sell-off, I set my clock for 6AM, so I could watch the prices before the opening, and monitor the first half hour of trading. Pre-opening price showed a $ 2.50 gain…nice, we were moving back up…and when the opening bell sounded the price went up to $ 183.65 at about 10AM, East Coast, but remember…I am in California, so with the prices moving the way I had hoped, it was just 7AM and therefore time to go have a peaceful breakfast. My wife was talking to me on the phone to say our good-mornings and she agreed, the world was coming back to normal…the TV was full of Bill Gates speaking at the Tech Convention, and Apple was up over $ 3.50 for the day. Ahhhh….the fruit on the buffet was delicious, Tony the Tiger was smiling at me on my cereal box, and the service by the staff was excellent.
Thirty minutes later I returned to my room..and hit the refresh key to see how much money we were making…Apple had fallen $ 12.00 per share in that thirty minutes! I called my wife to see if this was just some West Coast California wackiness we always talk about back East…sadly it wasn’t. For those still keeping score that’s another loss of $ 18,000.00 during the time it took to nourish myself. I passed on the bacon…had no butter, simple fruit and a bowl of cereal…this wasn’t punishment for being a pig at breakfast…it was punishment for being a hog in the stock market. Admittedly, these losses are coming from money made from Apple last year. I made money like a pig on Apple. Then bought back in and now I am an investor best described by another stock market cliché…pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered!
I can only hope that this week Steve Jobs does his usual hype job leading up to the earnings report and we get some of our losses back…I accept the fact that being a hog, I have been whipsawed by the stock.
The talking heads are saying the prices are falling because there are no buyers out there right now. My advice is to stay out of the market until a bounce occurs, because we may fall further this week!
POSTSCRIPT: It’s now 24 hours later and Apple hit $ 182.00, but did I sell and take what little they gave me back?....Oink Oink….no, and it’s back down to $ 178.00…....sooooeeey hog!
- Posted: 8 January 2008
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business failure
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