andrewe and sue12 r my heros, page-23

MM,

> the end game is the same. Maximise gains, minimise losses.

Mostly, but there's also risk assessment and time/energy input to account for.

> Would an investor that bought at $1 on the way up be happy still holding at $0.40?? Of course not.

That's not the only choice.
How about the $1 investor, who was stopped out at 70c because of swings/manipulation then has to buy back in at $1.20 ? But then he's less confident so he hangs on for a while before buying and makes sure the stock's not dropping. When's he convinced ? $1.50 ? More ?

Stops aren't magic.

If you've (for some reason) got too much of your capital in a spec stock, then yes stop stop STOP - but if you don't have all your eggs in one basket, and make an informed decision to value the stock, with a reasonable timeframe ("after the first well I'll re-evaluate") then by all means look away and don't come back until you need to. In this case you might have come back to see the fishing delays and sold out if you had better things to do, or trust that the delay costs will be covered by the upside (& potentially the lawsuit).

> It's always safer and smarter LONG TERM to realise losses and sit on the sidelines until confirmation.

I disagree that it's "always smarter", but that's fine to have differing opinions. What if all the "confirmations" are false rallies ? What if you lose that 10-20% on most trades because you thought it was going up, but it was really just a pump & dump ?