Negative Consensus

For the record:

My dad is questioning my judgment on my picks, pointing to the fact that they are down. The entire market is down and if the market is a grocery store, it would be on fire and everything would be selling at 50% off. Some of the merchandise is indeed damaged, but everyone is afraid to come to the grocery store because they read the news and know it's on fire. My goal is to always own the companies that will appreciate the most, and in times like this, it takes balls.

You have to make the fundamental decision, even if the investors that know very little about company valuations are trying to get rid of it like it's a disease. Where they see a downward trending price, I see a company that's priced to go out of business, but is growing revenues and net incomes at remarkable levels and is impacted positively by the government bailouts. There's a discrepancy. What do I do? I call up the company and ask questions.

It never hurts to ask around, maybe they are on fire. Digging for gold never was easy, but when you find it, it doesn't make sense to sell it to the guy down the road for the price of a hamburger. Maybe you should hold onto it... and wait for the guy down the road to realize that gold is valuable. :-)