Capital GainsIt is always easy to look in the rear view mirror and say wow there was
a selling point 4 months ago so I should have taken profits and gone
elsewhere. If I sold every time somebody said there was a
selling point I would miss a lot of big gains. Buy and Hold has
done well for me for the most part. How many recessions have
economists predicted? From my experience stock chart analysis is
a similar game.
At this point I must say that I did sell 25% of my holding last year
and paid a swack of tax but that hurt so much that I didn't want to do
that again unless I could offset it somehow. I had also heard
campaign promises that the PC party was going to change the Capital
Gain reporting system so that you didn't have to claim Capital Gains if
you reinvested again within a month or something.
Of course along with other investors I do remember Nortel as well as
Bre-X. I also remember how Royal Trust was part of Trilon
(and indirectly Brascan) way back when and drove Trilon down to less
than $2.00 per share. At some point 2 Trilon shares were
converted to a Brascan share so management has left the
Royal Trust fiasco behind them and have learned from that
mistake.
In comparison lets look at Nortel where they have been firing upward
management on a continual basis. They have gone through a 1 for
10 consolidation and the stock the last time I looked was still
trending downward.
If BAM is still heading downward by next spring I will conceed your point but not until then.
Good luck