At Your Own Peril?

I got an email yesterday from a reader noting that Telecom New Zealand (NZT) was trading with a $23 handle and he wondered if I thought it was the time to get in.

I wonder if I had just said yes if he would have bought right then. I replied that I had no idea what he should do but that I was worried about two things, more kiwi selling and what appears to be Prime Minister Clark's intention to split the company up. A potential split is a new wrinkle, I'm not sure what the full impact would be and it is the type of thing that could be missed, in fact the emailer missed it.

Had I missed that little nugget, told this stranger to buy and then the stock went down a lot, well then what?

There is a lot of content out there, some of it good and some of it bad. Taking action based on the word of someone else without doing your own heavy lifting is a bad idea. Assuming nothing but good intentions people miss things all the time and I am no exception.

Part of do-it-yourself is, um, doing it yourself.