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-- Palm's Stock Sucks (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=1212)

OK, I confess, I own a little bit of Palm's stock. Having never dabbld in the stock market before, I decided it could be fun.

But I'm baffled. Wedensday, late in the day I think, Pal released their earnings for the previous quarter. They were not only generating revenue, they were profitable. More profitable than the same quarter last year, twice as profitable as expected.

I thought for usre this would make the price go up. However, Thursday morning, Greenspan raisedthe rates or something, and all of NASDAQ slid. *sigh* Just my luck I thought.

Then Friday morning, some important stock analysts said the stock market would crash soon, so again the NASDAQ slid. (Is it a Catch-22 that comments about the stock market going down cause it to go down?)

Again, today, the NASDAQ stock market is running around like a chicken with its head cut off because of the anticipation of the Microsoft Ruling. You'd think a bad ruling for Microsoft would at the very least be indirectly good for Palm!

Maybe I'll stick to the slot machines.

The stock market frequently makes little sense, especially with so many people investing online now who don't pay any attention to P/E ratios, etc. Investing for the short term is rarely a good idea. I think Palm stock looks good, especially now that it has cooled off a bit.

I would recommend holding onto your Palm stock. If you sell now, you've lost money. If you wait and it doubles in a year, you've made money.

ALL investing in the stock market should be done with your eye on long term results. Most stocks will go up and down on a monthly/daily/hourly basis. However, if you have faith in the fundamentals of the company, you should hold on to the stock even/especially if it goes down.

One way to look at the dips in stock price is as a buying opportunity.

EVERYBODY is getting hurt recently in the NASDAQ, so you're not alone. I agree with Indy, now's a good buying opportunity...too bad I don't have a few grand laying around!

If you believe in a company's future, its business philosophy, growth potential, etc., there should be no reason to sell a stock just because it has dropped recently. A lot of stocks will have its usual fluctuations; the key is not to panic and sell. Think long term.

About a year and a half ago, right after I bought some shares of an antivirus software company, its price dropped about 40%! But because I liked the company and believed in its potential, I held on to it. Today, my investment has more than tripled. Of course, this is beans to a lot of dot-com people out there, but I actually like to invest in companies that MAKE money.

I say hang in there and ride it out. It's only a loss if you sell it!

PS - I think you mean that it's a self-fulfulling prophecy, not a Catch-22.

I think the stock market right now is way over priced. However just as I say that it goes up even more. I think people are losing some faith in the internet companies, I however still believe in traditional companies like IBM, Disney, etc. Those are good long term investments. Everyone buys so many internet company stocks, yet the internet company may lose a lot of money. I think that's why this year's superbowl commecials sucked so much.

The internet stocks (well most of them) had overly huge expectations and for most of them, they are falling well short of the expectations (and some of them are just flat out running out of cash).. so yes, a lot of people are dropping the tech stocks and throwing their money into the undervalued blue chips/traditional economy stocks.

However, personally I am still bullish on the techs. Yeah, it has been beaten down the past few weeks and I am down for the year, however, I have invested looking long term (5 years, 10 years) and all I see is more growth and integration with the Internet and technology to make our lives easier. Stick with the companies that are leaders and have great management and you should be happy happy happy.

One thing that has been pretty consistant in stocks lately is how tech IPO's perform. They IPO with tons of fan fare and they shoot up, then settle down at a nice "more reasonable" price. IMHO anyone who bought at the IPO didn't know what they were doing. I was planning one buying long before the IPO and now that it's settling down, I'm going to take the plunge.