"If you picked Apple or Amazon, you hit a home run." Well, sure you did. If you picked Yahoo in the late 90s, a home run hit you. If you picked Intel or Micros

"If you picked Apple or Amazon, you hit a home run." Well, sure you did. If you picked Yahoo in the late 90s, a home run hit you. If you picked Intel or Microsoft in the recent past, nothing happened to you. A good article on using insights as a tech person is Phil G's piece on shorting Microsoft in the 80s. (Microsoft was much less appealing to a tech person in the 80s than it is now, and a much better investment.) http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/money This is not to say that tech people can't make money banking on their instincts, just that I personally am not tremendously confident about my own instincts. I can certainly make a very compellingly sounding bull or bear case regarding any currently famous tech company. A great example from recent history is LinkedIn's stock tanking hugely in one day and then Microsoft bringing it back to the original level in one day some time later. And I'll be damned if Microsoft ever makes that money back. But I totally should have bought the dip.