louisgray.com: live

2005 was a good year for us in the stock market. Luckily for us, our investments in Google and Apple were some of the biggest hits of the year, and we got lucky with our timing on Baidu.com's IPO, among other short-term wins in Rackable, TiVo, etc. But 2006 has been a complete disaster, getting worse with every passing day, it seems. Even as the tech-rich NASDAQ continues to fall by full percentage points in every session, our own overweighted portfolio is getting killed.

Our two major holdings, Apple and Salesforce.com, are down 20 and 33% respectively from our average buy-in price, and Monday's activity saw our entire portfolio, including our 401k, take a dive, down another 2.5 percent. It's one thing to put money away for a rainy day, and quite another to see that money wash away in a flash flood of red ink. It's tempting enough to cut our losses and hide it in cash for the time being, but as any individual investor knows, that's exactly when the market would take a bounce upward - reverse indicators and all that...

Apple and Salesforce.com aren't the only stocks seeing their valuations recapitalized at a much lower level of course, but they are certainly the most painful for me. Tech giants like Microsoft similarly have continued a slide that looks to be unabated. And all we can do is wait and watch for things to turn around, whether it be a breakthrough on the oil and energy front, an easing of interest rates, or simply a spike in confidence, but our bets are made, and we're going to hold on.

Listening to ''Amsterdam'', by Oakenfold (Play Count: 1)