time to say goodbye, page-20

You also need to make a distinction between whether you are a trader or a long term investor. In my experience, traders make lousy long term investors and long term investors make lousy traders (myself included). I'm sure there are people who are able to be both simultaneously but they are certainly in the minority.

If you are taking a long term view of Centro, you would have researched the company and drawn your own conclusion on whether this represents value long-term. You are buying a piece of a business and if the business does well, you will do well. It really is a simple as that. If you have researched the company and think it represents value, the only decision then is whether 0.245 represents a good long term investment or not. If it does, buy some or buy some more. If it doesn't then either sell or wait.

I haven't seen anything that would change my fundamental view on Centro in the last few weeks. The only thing that has changed is that the price has dropped but I suspect this is being driven by factors unrelated to the underlying business like shorts, ASX100 exclusion and tax. If you are a long term investor who is marking to market every day and watching this slide, it's going to impact you psychologically which is going to lead you to lose focus on the reason you invested in the first place.

In the words of Yogo Berra, this is like deja-vu all over again. We covered all this ground when the SP dropped to mid 20s earlier in the year and the doomsayers came out in force. The major difference this time round is that we have a debt extension, new chairman a couple of new exec team members and there seems to be a clear indication that Centro is going to survive in one form or another. If anything the company is in better shape than last time, it's just suffering from lack of interest.

If you are trying to trade Centro, then it's a whole different kettle of fish and I wish you genuine good luck. I have a feeling though that the serious traders left a while ago.. although it wouldn't surprise me if they were still keeping an eye open just in case.