Believe it or not, I did not run across this thread until 10 minutes ago. I found and joined this forum in July 08, but rarely looked into this "Stock Picking" subforum. I came here for camaraderie in ER, not for stock tips, nor to argue politics.
Shortly after coming here, I read a post from VA about throwing all he had into BAC. That was in another thread. I was also telling people of my past mistakes with tech stocks in 2000, and how I realized my mistakes and recovered. I also cautioned against putting too much into one sector, leave alone just one stock.
Now reading this thread for the 1st time, actually just the first few dozen posts, I already felt my hair raised.
Talking of tech stocks, of the three big network switch guys, Cisco, Lucent, and Nortel, only Cisco remains. Nortel was trading down as a penny stock before declaring bankruptcy a few days ago. The media did not even bother to provide much coverage on that news. Lucent, the owner of prestigious Bell Labs, merged with Alcatel, and nobody cares about the combined company either. In 2000, all these were huge megacorps with greater than $100B market caps. Sandcastles all.
It's depressing. I don't know if I want to go back to read all of this thread.