Trading in SPM was suspended. When it resumed, the stock cratered to below $3 in seconds. Joe waited for a bounce, clamped his jaw, and sold out at $3.25, just below the high of the day. Over the next few months, the price dropped to a nickel and the company went bankrupt. Joe was in shock. He had lost $17,160 plus commissions, half his savings. As he thought it over, he realized the mistakes he'd made. He'd broken the primary law of diversity. You should never have all your eggs in one basket. Secondly, he had wavered between the attitudes of the trader and the long term investor, ignoring the safeguards of each approach. If you are trading, you must wait for good entry points and you must exit immediately if the price moves against you. Gains more than compensate for losses, if the losses are strictly limited. Furthermore, Victor Sperandeo had cautioned never to give back more than half your profits--they are too hard to come by. At one point Joe had been $32,000 ahead. It hurt to remember. If you are a long term investor, on the other hand, you must know that the company is sound. Joe failed to follow through on his investigation of the CEO. He had been too cheap to go to the annual shareholder's meeting where he would not have found the qualities he looked for in management. He had been neither trader nor investor. He had been a loser. Not only that, he had spent months staring into his monitor, living on the Internet, reading the Wall St. Journal every day and Barrons every weekend, and dreaming about how he would invest $450,000. He asked himself how he could have been so stupid, so inept. He went to a Korean bar. Gorgeous women paraded continuously past his table. When he tired of sitting with one, the next slid in against him and put her hand on his leg. "Buy me drink? You want pu-pu's?" The music was loud, hypnotic, non-stop. They danced. They accepted MasterCard. Joe staggered home with further losses. He was in deepest day-after shambles when the phone rang. "Ugh, hlo?" "Hi, Joe." "Max! How ya doin', buddy?" "Fine. I'm at the airport." "Great! Come on over, or are you just flying through?" "I thought I'd stay a couple of days. Kate told me you were here." Half an hour later, there he was. "Max, you look terrific . . . growing up, man, getting stronger." "Thanks, you don't look so great," Max said. "Nah, long night, never mind. A walk, rice and eggs, it will all be history." Max put his pack down in a corner. "That's not the lightest looking pack." "It has everything I own in it. Carried it all over New Zealand." "Yeah? Both islands? What do they call them?" "North and South," Max said, smiling. "Right, right. Always wanted to go there, supposed to be a great place."