At The Close  |  FEB 2009

At The Close by Moses Sanchez

At The Close by Moses Sanchez Many people can be grouped into one of two categories. I am an eternal optimist while my wife is pessimistic and we complement each other perfectly. Investors or traders need to know which category they fall into and acknowledge it as soon as they get involved with the market because it can have devastating effects on their decisions otherwise. In late 2007, a colleague of mine — let’s call him Optimistic Oscar — was buying what he considered good deals. He did his homework and analysis both fundamentally and technically, and concluded that purchasing stock of some quality companies prior to the holidays was a good idea. Companies like Goldman Sachs (GS), Apple (AAPL), Honeywell (HON), Research in Motion (RIMM), and Amazon (AMZN) were solid companies, and I didn’t think what he had in mind was a bad idea. From mid-September to mid-October 2007, Goldman Sachs jumped $40 from $187 to $227 a share, and on a minor pullback he decided to purchase more shares because as far as he was concerned (being Optimistic Oscar), they were going to continue going up. Meanwhile, Research in Motion (the makers of the BlackBerry handheld device), a company having nothing to do with the financial industry, ran up from the mid-$80s to $117 a share during the same time frame. Charting RIMM, Optimistic Oscar figured as long as it kept breaking out, he would keep buying on the pullbacks, and he did.

by Moses Sanchez