Ideally, you buy stock at its lowest price and sell at its highest. Practically speaking, you do the best you can between these unpredictable extremes. For, as you will see, the low does not become apparent until your stock begins to rise above it, the high is not established until your stock begins to drop away. Although all of us could wish it otherwise, no bells, no flashing lights, no 21-gun salutes ever mark the bottom or the top.

Timing your stock transactions, therefore, is perhaps the most delicate element of investment, the decision requiring the keenest judgment and the surest touch. Experience helps, although success is not necessarily proportional to it. Veterans of the market, men who have been buying and selling for 30 or 40 years, sometimes seem to have a sixth sense about turning points, up or down, for individual stocks, or industrial groups, or the market as a whole. On what seems to be no discernible evidence, they will mutter, "Well, I think the market's going to fall out of bed," and, sure enough, within a week there is a 9- or 10-point reaction. Yet new­comers may also acquire this skill with surprising speed.

Since judgment is a subjective quality, there are no firm rules for applying it. But there are generalities that can begin to define objectives and delimit areas of choice. And there are a number of techniques which attempt, more or less successfully, to better the average results obtained from trying to calculate timing arbitrarily.

Most professionals will tell you, right off, not to try for the extremes. The surest way to miss tops or bottoms is to wait for that last extra point of gain, that one more point of drop. Usually, an investor is considered to have done very well if he buys or sells within 5 points of the limit on a moderate-to-wide swing, within a point or two over a narrow range.

Another way of looking at the ideal objective is to reverse it: try to avoid selling at the low or buying at the top. This may seem to be superfluous advice, but both have happened many times when emotion entered heavily into judgment. Buying near or at the top is a temptation when a stock has been rising swiftly and steadily and the investor is eager to get aboard. The top, after all, is only relative. New tops may be within reach which will make the current one seem a reasonable buying level. Selling near or at a low is tempting when a stock has slid downward and the holder has become disenchanted with it. The impulse is to sell out, take the loss, avoid further trouble, and be well rid of the dog.

The correctness of these decisions cannot be judged in the abstract. They depend, first, on your objectives (See Chapter 3) and on how closely or satisfactorily you have realized them. And they depend on your analysis of the several dimensions of highness and lowness involved.

Buying for income is relatively easy. The indicated divi­dend divided by the current price will give the yield in percentage terms. If the yield suits you, and investigation suggests that it is likely to be maintained, the price is right, whether it is in the high, middle, or low range for the year. The problem of the buyer-for-income in recent years, of course, has been the fact that a rising market has reduced yields to some very uninspiring levels. The average yield of 10 big oils in the first quarter of 1959 was 3 per cent. For five chemicals it was 2.24 per cent. For seven steels it was 3.85 per cent. Only the better railroads were around 5 per cent, as a group.

Strictly on an income basis, the investor would do better at the savings bank than in oils and chemicals, and might be considered to have missed his market in these categories. The choice then is whether to argue himself into accepting 3 or 3.5 per cent (or 2.2 if he wants G.E., 1.5 if he wants Dow) in a sought-after category, whether to switch cate­gories, or whether to ignore the market until conditions are more to his liking. There may also be a temptation to jump into a stock that for some reason is still yielding 5 or 6 per cent, although it would be foolish to do so without deter­mining why it has maintained a high price/dividend relation­ship when everything else is low.

If the objective is capital gain, timing becomes more crucial. Somehow you must determine how many more points above the current price your stock is likely to go, and whether this will be a satisfactory profit, considering that possibly 25 per cent of it will go for taxes.

All rises must be predicated on earnings, or the expecta­tion of earnings. Take, for instance, a stock selling at 50 and paying $2. This is a 4 per cent yield, which, we'll say, is about average for this market this year. Now, news gets out that it is possible that the company will earn $6 per share by year's end. Since a 50-per cent payout is the general practice, a dividend rise to $3 is indicated. Naturally, there will be a small rush toward the stock and a rise in the market price, probably to 75, or the new equivalent of 4 per cent.

This is the simplest sort of cause-and-effect relationship, so simple, in fact, that it practically never happens just this way. If prices reacted exclusively on good or bad dividend news or expectations, the market would be far more static than it is. Still, earnings and the benefits therefrom that shower down on the stockholder are the basic premise of stock activity.

The biggest complicating factor is the general absence of hard information. It's rare that a jump in earnings can be positively pin-pointed, or pin-pointed before a market rise has taken effect. As a result, most investors have to contend with a vast range of other investors' hopes, guesses, anticipa­tions, and facts. Furthermore, the stocks believed to have the greatest potential for growth usually vary the general pattern. The Dows, Minneapolis Honeywells, Owens-Cornings, and Minnesota Minings have long since been pushed to levels where their dividend returns are virtually mean­ingless, and where perhaps even their growth potential has been completely discounted. Still, these extremities were more marked when stocks generally were yielding 5 and 6 per cent. Now that so many yield 3 and under, the growth specials do not seem so unreasonable at less than 2.

And perhaps, indeed, they are not unreasonable. These companies have been growing at a steady rate, but every sign of growth is answered by a further upward flurry of the stock.

To get back to timing, the problem for the investor seeking to buy is to place two values on the stock he is considering, over and beyond the factual research he has been able to do. First, he has to assign some value to public interest in the stock. And second, he has to establish a target for himself. In other words, if the stock under study is selling at 50, how many points has the price been inflated by other investors' hopes? Probably there is no exact figure anyone could prove. But an approximation can be reached, and it is interesting to see how the assignment of weights and values can clarify thinking about worth. Price inflation can be gauged by the volume of activity in the stock, the rate of price rise, the extent of the news and gossip about the company in the financial and business press, the general popularity of the products in which it deals, or the industrial category in which it is grouped. There is, for instance, likely to be a good deal more inflation in an electronics stock these days than in Cream of Wheat.

Perhaps you decide that 40 is a more realistic price, a more likely price if there were not so much excitement and energy behind the stock. Now enters the second value. How far do you think the stock can travel and how soon? What are your objectives? Ten points? Twenty? A 50 per cent profit? Or 100? In six months? A year? Two years?

Wishing won't make it so, but it will place the stock in some sort of perspective. If, when it comes right down to it, you are expecting to double your money in a stock in eight months, you will have to sense, or have a feeling of, greater strength and vitality in the issue than if you are willing to wait the same period for 10 or 15 points. This is not "hunching" the stock's performance, but it is allied to the sixth sense that every investor must cultivate in reaching his final decision to act. Everything he knows, everything he has heard, everything he has evaluated, and everything these factors combine to tell him about a stock's prospects ulti­mately narrow down to the fine point at which he is moved to buy or not buy.

In addition to analyzing a stock in terms of your goals, there are, as noted, several dimensions of highness and low-ness to be considered at any time. A stock may be high or low in relation to its own performance over a period of time, in relation to its category, or in relation to the market. Again, there are no absolutes to interpret for you the mean­ing of one position as against another. There are only pos­sibilities to be judged.

A stock that is at its own yearly high must be judged for the possibility of going higher. It would quite possibly be a risky buy unless the upward momentum were pro­nounced and the indications of further progress were clear. The width of the range also has a bearing. A stock near the high of a 10-point spread between high and low is likely to be less volatile than one near the high of a 50- or 60-point range. The implication is that if a stock can cruise upward through a range of 50 points, it can with equal ease slide that far downward. Obviously, stocks do not operate forever within predictable ranges. But an issue that has caught in­vestors' eyes, and has started to run ahead of itself, its group, and the market can be considered to have a future. Its high-low levels of the past can be viewed as less significant, and the investor's effort can be bent toward determining how far the run will go.

A stock at mid-range presumably has a demonstrated po­tential for achieving a higher level, but the course of its action should be plotted to see whether it is at mid-range through a series of small ups and downs, or whether mid-range is simply the current point of a downward slide—or, for that matter, the current point of a gradual climb.

A stock at its low should also be examined for hints as to the reasons for this state of affairs. It might best be shunned—but not too quickly. For if it seems inherently sound, although low in relation to its group or the market as a whole, it may be a sleeper, the kind of depressed, overlooked, out-of-favor stock that offers a fine opportunity for the investor who is not afraid to run against the tide. Theoretically, at least, this is the kind of bargain that diligent investors are supposed to dig up for themselves. Be clear­headed; most depressed stocks are hovering at low levels for a reason. But the market is capricious enough to low-rate many issues for reasons having nothing to do with funda­mental values.

The depressed issue usually offers a better possibility for improvement than the generally depressed group. If oils or chemicals or rails are unfashionable as a whole, there is, in most cases, a large reason for it. Customers are over-inventoried, sales are down, a competing industry has cut into a market - something has occurred which requires a fundamental correction before the industry will again seem attractive.

The depressed market, like the depressed stock, often has great possibilities—if the investor can satisfy himself that he is getting in at an appropriately low level. The low of 1953 was a lovely opportunity. DuPont was under 100, General Dynamics was in the 30's, Union Carbide in the 60's, Central & Southwest was at 19—everything that is solid, glamorous, and soaring today was at bargain-base­ment prices.

The alternatives are many. The combination of factors that bear on any one issue at any one time is almost in­calculable. This chapter seeks only to indicate some of the considerations that must enter into any buying decision at different levels and at different points in time.

One final point is personal. Some rigor must also enter into the investor's calculations. Caution is necessary and praiseworthy. But once an investor has decided he is operating as soundly as he knows how, he must be prepared to act. It is a human failing to want to be right. There are few feelings more discomfiting than knowing one has figured wrong. In investment, however, this can be an extremely hampering element. The unhappiest kind of wrongness of all is to be unable to take the bold step, and then find that one has missed the boat. Decisions infected or paralyzed by doubt and fear are no decisions at all. The point comes in all investment decisions when there is no more figuring to do, when no more answers can be squeezed from the facts, when results can only be revealed in an unknowable-future. At that point, the investor must take his courage in his own two hands and act.

Selling is not necessarily the opposite of buying. While there are the usual factors about the stock, the industry, and the market to weigh, one crucial fact is known: the price you paid. The amount of profit or loss, therefore, is always settled for the investor approaching a decision to sell. If the profit is satisfactory, or the loss insupportable, sell. There may be further profit to be gleaned; the loser may turn around and cut the loss a few points. But if you believe you have an ample return on your investment and are ready to realize on it, don't delay. Sell. Or, if you are thoroughly convinced that there is no advantage in waiting for the sour performer to improve, sell. Take the loss as a tax deduction, and use the funds you have salvaged to get into something better.

Beyond these fairly clear-cut situations, the confusions mount. Many investors these days avoid them by taking no action at all, arguing that any considerable profit they have realized will be so heavily reduced by taxes that it's just as well to ride along and see what happens. And in a rising market, what happens is often very pleasant.

But at some point, unless dividend income is your only objective, the decision about when to sell must be faced. The time and price level you pick must be determined, first, by the profit you have and, second, by your analysis of how much more the stock promises. If you are persuaded that your 20-point gain is only the beginning of a long rise, stay with it. If you feel it's edging to the peak—that 5 more points is the limit—don't wait. Sell. Those last few points are rarely worth waiting for. You could be wrong to the extent that there's another 20 points in the stock, but you could also be wrong to the extent that there isn't 5 more. Take your 20 points and run.

The temptation to hold on a little longer and extract that last drop of juice is particularly strong in investors who hope the rise will compensate for their having bought in late. If a stock starts its run at 30, and you get in at 45, don't scoff at 65. For you it's 20 points, but for the stock it's 35—more than double the starting price. Tiresome as it may be, it's necessary to say that many stocks can and have run up 200 and 300 per cent. Where earnings support the rise, there's technically no limit. But in recent years, as has been pointed out in other chapters, prices have been out­stripping earnings and—very possibly—earnings potentials for years ahead. If the stock at 30 represents 15 times earnings, a quick rise to 65 means 32.5 times earnings. In such a case, it is at least as important to place a value on the significance of this figure as on the market price of 65. In fact, the market price of 65 tells you little, except that some­one somewhere is currently willing to pay 20 points more than you did for the stock. But you don't know that some­one's objectives. He—or they—may have decided for any one of a hundred reasons that there's a quick 5 or 10 points at 65. You, however, may be reasoning, quite falsely, that because the stock went from 30 to 65 it might just as well hit 100. If enough 5- and 10-point investors begin unload­ing at 70 and 75, the pressure may drive you right back down to 45.

A rise will, as you have seen, also narrow the percentage of yield. A dividend of $1.50 at 30 is a nice 5 per cent. At 65, it is a meager 2.3 per cent. Part of the rise may have come from investors-for-income eager to get a 4.5 or 5 per cent return, but once the demand has shot the issue to 40 or above, interest from this source may dwindle. The capital-gains investors, noting the action, will become interested for a while. But at 60 or 65, you have to assume that a fair amount of interest is now coming from rabbity, johnny-come-latelies who will be the first to panic out when the downward pressure appears.

In short, in selling as in buying, there are many other people involved. It is people making your stock go up, and people making it go down. You can't outguess them all. Calculate the value of the stock as best you can. Know your own objectives and hold to them. And act when they are realized, or close to it.

Selling at 65 will bring you a fine capital gain. The stock may, in fact, carry on to 100. And, true, you might have had the other 35 points as well. But this way lies madness. There are stocks making gains every day that you don't have a piece of, but might have. Don't let the if's govern your decisions. Nobody ever impoverished himself taking 20-point profits. Many people who decided to wait for more, and more, and more, and just a little bit more, are nowhere.

Selling at a loss is harder to figure. No amount of loss is ever truly acceptable. When losses are small, optimism dic­tates hanging on in the hope that they might be recouped. As they increase, desperation traps the investor into thinking that there's nowhere to go but up—and anyway the loss is now too big to take. And thus develops the stage of paralysis in which the stock sags, limp and unenterprising, and the investor stubbornly stays with it, hoping to shame the damn thing into retrieving the situation. At such a time, the investor's sense of betrayal is great. The stock seems a mean stupid thing, a great, obvious, no-good nothing that is apparently willing to ruin itself just to make the investor look like the fool he feels himself to be.

Well, for five minutes every day, anyway, the investor may permit himself such fantasy. But there's work to be done. Few stocks have fallen—or are falling—through the bottom these days. If your little darlin' begins to retreat, some hard figuring is in order. Look ahead. Settle in your own mind how much of a loss you are willing to take. If ten points does it, grit your teeth and sell out when that point is reached.

The present great emphasis on buying and holding for the long term, whatever its virtues, can trap investors into think­ing that everything works out right in the end, if one is only patient enough. But stocks can stale and age and lose their zip, just like investors. And long-term objectives should not block you from action swiftly and decisively if events demand it. Many long-term investors are, indeed, looking 20 years ahead. But they don't necessarily expect to arrive there with the same stocks they started with. Judicious switching may be in order from time to time. Or one may

be in and out of a stock several times, as its fortunes change over a period of years. These switches, these ins and outs are partic­ularly important if your investment shows signs of failing you. Have your objectives on the profit side, but give a thought to what your stop points should be, as well.

One of the treasured maxims of Wall Street is: "Don't buy on good news or sell on bad." All this means is that in most cases both kinds of news have been dis­counted. Or, sometimes, that it will take some time for the market to assess the meaning of the news, and that therefore the reaction will come somewhat later. Finally, it also means that the market is fickle enough on oc­casion to slump on good news and rise on bad. Usually, in these instances, the good isn't good enough, or the bad isn't so bad as everyone had feared.

Almost every year sees a slump at Christmas time, as the big investors sell for tax reasons and thereby generate some downward pressure. Almost every year sees a kind of summer doldrums overtake the market, when everyone would much rather be vacationing than turning another dollar.

It is also an old saw that no one should sell beverage stocks—the cola drinks and such—in the summer. This is when the natives are buying the stuff by the gallon.

Formula Buying and Selling

In recent years, a great many investors have attempted to take the guesswork out of timing their market transactions through the use of formulas. These are systems which establish automatic points for buying and selling, and thereby remove - or at least reduce - the pain of deciding such matters at any given moment. Generally speaking, they are quite successful, although not infallible. They are widely used by investment funds and the managers of college endowments, for whom profit is desirable, certainly, but for whom safety is imperative.

They will also work satisfactorily for the individual in­vestor, but the stock (or stocks) involved must be wisely selected, the premises of the formula must be sound, and whichever one is utilized must be faithfully followed over a reasonable period of time.

While there are a number of formula plans, basically they are variations on four main types: Dollar Cost Aver­aging, the Constant Dollar Plan, the Constant Ratio Plan, and the Variable Ratio Plan.

Dollar Cost Averaging is well suited to the needs of the smaller investor, and is applied by all members of the New York Stock Exchange's Monthly Investment Plan. (See Chapter 11) Briefly stated, the formula says that the regular investment of a fixed dollar amount will result in a lower cost per share than the average of the prices paid at the time your purchases were made.

A simplified table will show you how this works:

Amount Invested*	Odd-lot Market                Price	Shares Acquired*	Total Shares       Owned Cost	Cumulative of Shares	Total Value Owned
$40	20	2.00	2.00	$ 40	$40.00
40	21	1.90	3.90	80	81.90
40	22	1.81	5.71	120	125.62
40	23	1.74	7.45	160	171.35
40	24	1.66	9.11	200	218.64
40	25	1.60	10.71	240	267.75
40	24	1.66	12.37	280	299.28
40	22	1.81	14.18	320	314.16
40	20	2.00	16.18	360	325.60
40	18	2.22	18.40	400	333.00
40	22	1.81	20.21	440	446.82

♦Commission    excluded

As can be seen, $40 invested each month for a hypothetical year acquired a total of 21.87 shares of stock at varying prices. The price curve rose for six months, dropped to a level 2 points below the first price paid, then picked up all but 1 point of the six-month gain. The average of the 12 market prices, ranging from 18 to 25, is $22.08. But on an investment of $480, the average price per share of 21.87 shares is only $21.94. Had the investor put his $480 into one, lump-sum purchase, there were only four months in the year in which he could have got a better price.

The trend of the market is not a factor. Whether it rises steadily, falls steadily, or swings up and down, as in the example, the fact that more shares can be bought at low prices than at high ones will hold the price per share below the average of the prices paid.

What is affected, of course, is the total value of the shares acquired. As the price drops, the total worth of your shares will necessarily fall behind the amount you have invested. Note that at the sixth month, with the price at the high point of 25, your equity would be worth $27.75 more than you had paid for it—an appreciation of 11.5 per cent You would still have been ahead when the price went to 24, but at 22 you would be lagging behind. At the low of 18, your stock would be worth only $333, which is $67— nearly 17 per cent—less than you had invested. The rise in the final month, however, would put you $47.28—just about 10 per cent—ahead again.

The formula can be tested on the actual performance of any stock over any period of time. The only constant factor must be a fixed investment at regular intervals. Taking the 12-year span from 1946 through 1957, the investment of $500 per year in General Electric, at the average of its annual high and low prices (adjusted for splits), would have accumulated about 298 shares with a current worth of $28,570—a 476-per cent appreciation. (There would also have been $3,285 worth of dividends.) The average price per share would have been $20.15. This was, of course, a time of rising values, but the result—except for the total worth of the holding—would have been the same had prices descended steadily. As far as the price and price-per-share averages are concerned, the sequence of items is unimportant; the arithmetic works either way.

Since,   in this  century,  the  long-term  trend   of  market prices—and, hence, values—has been up, the Dollar Cost Averaging formula can work for the investor with the courage and the resources to maintain his consistent pattern of investment. The squeeze on good intentions comes—and must be guarded against—in a period of decline, when the increasing number of shares obtained hardly seems to com­pensate for the shrinking value of the total investment. If you are afraid that your stock has finally shown its true colors, that in time of stress it has proved to be a dog, you will be tempted not only to stop investing in it, but to sell out and take your loss. Be of stout heart. No market has ever failed to turn around. Dollar Cost Averaging will retrieve your losses and more on the eventual upswing.

The other three plans prescribe various ways to force the sale of stock when it is high and encourage its purchase when it is low. The advantage can be seen immediately. When the ordinary investor is sweating bullets to decide whether to cash in on a rise, or whether a slump has gone far enough to permit buying in, the formula investor simply consults his plan and acts accordingly.

The Constant Dollar Plan operates on the premise that a fixed number of dollars shall be kept in stocks. When the value of the stocks increases a certain percentage, selling is automatically called for, and the excess over the fixed dollar amount is put into bonds or savings. Should the stocks drop a certain percentage in value, funds are automatically invested to reestablish the fixed dollar amount.

For example, let's assume you have $5,000 in a stock (to keep things simple) and $5,000 in the bank. Your stock represents 100 shares at 50. Your formula decrees that if your stock's value should increase 25 per cent, you sell. It rises to 60. This might begin to torment the ordinary investor, but for you it is merely a 20-per cent rise, and does not satisfy the formula. At 62½, however, you have your 25 per cent. You sell 20 shares, thus realizing $1,250, which goes into the bank. The remaining 80 shares, at 62½, are worth $5,000, which is the constant number of dollars your formula intends you to keep in stock.

Now the market drops 20 per cent. That's 12V4 points, or back to 50. This is the level at which the formula says you should buy back in. Your 80 shares at 50 are worth $4,000. To return to the constant-dollar level of $5,000, you buy 20 shares for $1,000.

Between the sale and the purchase, you are $250—or 5 per cent—ahead, and your investment is unimpaired.

It can quickly be seen that the plan does not guarantee maximum profit. The investor who sold everything at 62½ and bought back at 50 would have a clear profit of $1,250, or 25 per cent, on his investment. But this is academic. There is, as we have learned, no assurance that tops can be pin­pointed. Over a period of time, a steady 5 per cent, plus dividends and any other windfall extras, will be a highly satisfactory performance.

The more significant flaw in the plan is that the selling point will arrive too quickly in a strong rising market, and the buying point too quickly in a bear market. In recent years, when many stocks have doubled or tripled in value, it can be seen that four 25-per cent rises could sell the investor out, when considerably greater gains were just ahead. By the same token, in a prolonged slump, he would be buying in long before the bottom was reached.

A couple of amendments to the Constant Dollar Plan can alleviate this situation somewhat. The experts suggest that a time factor be introduced, as well as a limitation on the amount of money shifted as a result of rises or drops. In other words, if a second 25-per cent rise occurs within three months of the first, hold on. Such a swift appreciation would seem to indicate a strong upward trend, and the investor should not be too hasty to sell, plan or no plan. At the end of three months, however, a rise of 25 per cent or better should be acted on.

As a second check on selling out too fast, it might be decided that no more than 5 or 10 per cent of the total fund should be shifted at any one time. This, in effect, makes the dollar fund less than constant, but, again, it permits an opportunity to capitalize on a really healthy rise.

The Constant Ratio Plan offers another variation, with possibly a bit more flexibility. Here the ratio between the funds in stock and those in cash or bonds is maintained. It can be a conservative 50-50 split, or 60 in stock, or whatever the investor wishes. Under a 60-40 split, $6,000 would be in stock, $4,000 in cash. If the same percentage limits were used, a 25-per cent gain in stock value would dictate selling enough shares to reduce the stock fund to $6,000. And a 20-per cent drop would call for purchases sufficient to restore the fund upward. Arithmetically, it will work out very much the same as the Constant Dollar Plan, except that it permits a more liberal percentage of funds in stock and may, there­fore, be somewhat more substantially affected by a volatile market. Essentially, however, it has the same disadvantages: it might cramp the investor on a rise, and commit him too quickly on a drop.

Potentially more profitable is the Variable Ratio Plan, which reduces the percentage of funds in stock in the course of a rise and increases it as the market drops. Since the plan is variable, of course, some standard measure must be estab­lished to determine when the percentages should be increased or reduced. The Dow-Jones Index may be used, or any one of a number of check points, depending on the studies—and the sophistication—of the investor.

Under the Variable Ratio Plan, stocks and cash may be split equally at the outset. Should the Dow-Jones Index rise 20 per cent (and presumably your stocks with it), the plan might specify that stock should now be cut back to 35 per cent of the total funds involved. If you have, for instance, that same $5,000 in stocks and that other $5,000 in cash, a 20 per cent rise in the stock fund to $6,000 would mean a total fund of $11,000. Since stock should now be only 35 per cent of this, or $3,850, shares representing $1,150 must be sold and added to the cash fund. Should the rise continue another 20 per cent, the stock fund might now be cut to 20 per cent of the total fund, and so on. On the down side, percentages of stock would increase as prices sank.

It will be a useful exercise for new investors to set up hypothetical funds under these various plans, using various stocks or portfolios, to see how, over several months, the actual transactions work out.

In a rising market it will soon be seen that the investor can be sold out, and thereby find himself with a large cash account and relatively little to buy except at peak levels. This is one of the fundamental lessons of the formula plans. They are essentially a form of protection, and work best in cyclical, swinging markets. Here they will take much of the mystery out of the difficult timing problem, and, if carefully attended and applied to decent stocks, they will almost certainly assure modest profits.

Best of all, they will force on the investor the healthiest of practices:  selling high and buying low.