"oh ya, and remember that when all those shares were sold, someone else now owns them. Me, and I am not going to sell them back to you."

Hi Crazy, thanks for that post. I hope you don't mind me picking away at it a bit just to demonstrate my approach.

Crazy's post demonstrates a line in the sand type of thinking. He's not going to budge, he's going to hold onto these shares forever, or until the company sells. A lot think like this. It may be the best thing for him if all works out in the end. It is inflexible though and makes no allowance for contingency or protecting ones capital. What if the market does it's big flop and he just lets say... $400K drop to $75K. Maybe he can live with this, but maybe he didn't need to. If I may, his approach also feels that it has an emotional/attitudinal "out of my dead hands" feel to it which supports the inflexible position. I may not be totally correct in my appraisal of his post, but I know it represents the positions of others who would be howling (not laughing) in just such a pulldown circumstance. Wisdom is all about being flexible and responding to new situations in new ways as required. It's like someone who won't leave the house in a flood because they've always lived there and will stay home to protect it....... as it washes away from greater forces.