7美国来鸿股市山车游..doc

7. A Roller-Coaster Ride in the Stock Market (无法显示图，但图中有注释) 　　Do you enjoy a roller-coaster6 ride? Ups and downs, zigs7 and zags8, free falls in the dark. I made several such rides in Disney Park in Florida. It was an awful yet exhilarating9 experience. But I vowed that I would not do it again since I really do not have the guts10 to experience so many things out of your vision and out of your control. You do not know where you are going and when it is going to be over. However, I experienced another long roller-coaster ride in the stock market. So did a lot of my friends. In 1999, the bull dominated the stock markets in the States and stocks simply soared11, Dow and Nasdaq reaching their historical heights respectively. In particular, the technology sector grew like crazy. You did not have to be a technology guru12 to pick the right stock and get rich. You just picked any technology stock, at sheer13 blind random, and you would gain after a short period of time. That was the time when most of us--I mean the circle of our friends--got into the stock market. 　　In Connell, I had taken a couple of finance courses and learnt some basic concepts about stocks, such as “ Buy low, Sell high” ,“ Diversify your portfolio14” (i.e. Dont put all your eggs in one basket.) and “ Invest for the long term.” However, being a green hand15 in this market, I found it terribly hard to apply what I learnt. First of all, it was difficult to make a due judgment on when the price hit the bottom and was about to turn upward. I had a watch list. Some stocks just had the momentum16 from nowhere and kept on inching higher and higher; some just went headlong17 in the opposite direction. Secondly, it was easy to say “ Diversify your portfolio” . But with my little savings that I invested in the market, it did not seem to make sense to divide a couple of thousand dollars among several stocks. When I tried to apply the evaluation theories to the stocks, they were outrageously expensive, especially