"Somebody stop me.

HI Betty,

I wouldn't tell you to stop nor to buy, that is entirely up to you. If you do take the trial, just cancel if you're not happy with what you find. I'm not particularly happy with all the sales pitches the Fool hits me with but I can live with them.

One of the reasons I decided to give Inside Value a try is my belief we are in a secular bear market and will be for some time, the bull within the bear these past 2 years has been fun but how much longer will it hold up??? Because of this I wanted to start looking more for value stocks to help weather the rainy days ahead.

I subscribe because I'm not all that great at reading financial statements(my mind tends to start spinning), evaluating management which I have no access to is rather difficult... I have a number of portfolios on the Fool I use to track the performance of what I hold based on where the company came to my attention. I will include the first buy date as they span different amounts of time and all are rather short term. No doubt many folks have done better on their own. It will take some years to see how it all unfolds. I have sold some along the way but overall the returns of those sold was to the plus side... So here are the numbers for the 35 positions I presently hold:


My holdings from before the Fool: 1/2003 => 6 positions => 28%

Stock Advisor: 10/2003 => 6 positions => 40%

Hidden Gems: 2/2004 => 14 positions => 15.5%

Inside Value: 10/2004 => 4 positions => 9.8%

Stocks found because of the MF boards: 10/2004 => 5 positions => 24.5%

Regards, Ken ("As Tim McGraw sings, "I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying.")

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"Because love does not do sums, but instead makes choices, and then gives its all."
From the story "The Burning Man" by Tad Williams (See I Corinthians Ch 13:4-13 it's in my profile quote)