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"It ain't the thing you don't know that hurt you the most.  It's the
things you do know that ain't so."  Who said that?

Today's chart looks much like a set of stairs, going down, of course.
It could barely hold a level for more than an hour before it lost more,
then tried to arrest its fall.  Not even close.  At the close it lost
enough to be significant, but volume slacked-off just a bit to +5% above
average.

Perhaps you have discovered, as I have, that the biggest screw-ups in
life derive from a false and unexamined fundamental assumption.  There
are a lot of these which involve investing, and which are fostered by
the industry.

One of the first and biggest myths is: "as a stockholder you are an
owner of the company".  That's false.  Nothing could be further from the
truth.

Another is: "it's a good company."  And quickly behind that is: the way
the company makes its living, i.e. its earnings, is relevant to your
making money as a stockholder.  Both are at best irrelevant, and mostly
false.  When dividends become the primary result of the business, then
there will be just a bit of truth in it.  Not today!

To quote Casey Stengel, "for your information, let me ask you a
question."  Just who do you think you are?  Do you think that because
you bought a stock, you're going to move the market?  If dividends
aren't the result of the business which will make you money, market
price appreciation is.

So it doesn't matter at all what YOU think about a company, it's
business, or its prospects for growth and earnings.  If that's why you
buy stocks, you are deluded.  You need to re-examine your assumptions!
That was an investing concept, fundamental analysis, more appropriate to
half a century ago--yes, the 50's were half a century ago!  What matters
is what investors as a whole, or more precisely, on the Street, think
about the company and not it's prospects, but their liklihood they will
be able to sell Main Street on a story about its prospects.  It's a
perverted aspect of that "Delphi" process I mentioned this week, in that
it's a group decision.

I'm sorry to upset your applecart, if that fits you.  If you intend to
make money in the stock market by buying and selling stocks, you have to
learn to "go with the flow" as we used to say.  Otherwise, find a good
mutual fund manager and let him manage your money for you.

Yes, I know.  I don't have much respect for complete Momentum Players
who don't know and don't even care to know what a company does either.
Personally, a large percentage of my investments are in "value" funds,
the "dumpster divers" and contrarians who find strong but unloved
companies that can be reasonably expected to return to appreciation.
But that's not an amateur's game.  Neither is trying to make short-term
profits on buying or selling stocks of the market's recent "darlings",
companies we hear in the Nightly Business Report as being in the "Top
10" or "Stocks in the News", and trying to hold your own
opinions about
the companies, their business, their prospects the suitability of the
stock as an investment.  You can do one or the other, not both
simultaneously--or you'll get creamed!

 Price    Vola-    Momen-   Volume   Oscil-   Summ.
 Change   tility   tum               lator    Index
 -__+     -__+     -__+     -__+     -__+     -__+

 __|_     __>_     _|__     __>_     _>__     _<__     10/21
 ___>     __|_     _|__     _>__     _>__     _<__     10/24
 _>__     __|_     _|__     __>_     __>_     _<__     10/25
 _>__     ___     _>__     _<__     10/26
 _|__     ___     _|__     _<__     10/27

Timing Signals:  I don't use or recommend timing signals, but they're
fun to watch.  If I did though, well, I might use something like this.
(Be warned!!  It tends to whipsaw around signal points!)

Last Signal: SELL       Date:  10/04/05 S&P:    1214
Winner or Loser:  Loser                 By:     -13

See my market tracking charts for '03-'04 and my investment strategy
study at my website(s):
http://www.xprt.net/~pgrogers/Pers.html
http://www.geocities.com/paulgrogers/Pers.html




Paul Rogers, paulgrogers{at}yahoo.com                       -o)
http://www.angelfire.com/or/paulrogers                   /\\
Rogers' Second Law: Everything you do communicates.     _\_V

... I have seen the enemy, and he is us!  Pogo
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