We take this comment from The Australian, early feb.2001. Great illustration of why caution is always required when dealing with stockbrokers. Your interest is not always their interest.

Start quote:
"It was fascinating to see that Norgard Clohessy just scored a Guernsey in BRW's Fast 100 list - whatever that is. Norgard, which is taking over the growth-challenged Yates, was the lucky recipient of a glowing research report from the Warburglers a couple of weeks ago. A "buy", you guessed it. Lo and behold the stock went for a gallop from 40c to an apogee of 50c yesterday. Now Norgard is having a capital raising - a $30 million to $40 million placement. We haven't witnessed news of this capital raising yet, only a couple of notices about options exercises. No matter. Now the Yates merger is a scheme of arrangement via scrip. The former proposal to merge with Yates was a 2-for-1 share swap but now that Norgard has rallied, it's looking more like a 5-for-2. Fortuitous that."
end quote.

Gann followers will find it interesting - on the weekly chart - to observe that the news release - major in the context of this stock, pushed the price to an interesting relationship - back to half, note also the dates.

And about Pacific Dunlop: this extract out of BRW March 9.

Start quote:
'Since early 1988, Pacific Dunlop's market capitalisation has crashed from $3 billion to about $1.1 billion. Its shares have been trading at $1.22, compared with a 12-month high of $1.75, but despite the sharp decline in shareholder value, it is difficult to find a sharebroker prepared to say that Pacific Dunlop shares should be sold. From the group of 13 stockbrokers that provides research material to Multex Global Estimate, only JB Were has an outright sell on the company. And even then the recommendation was made by Were at the end of November and has not been updated. Many of the recommendations on Pacific Dunlop were reviewed late in February. Londsdale Securities, for example, indicated on February 26 that the shares were a "hold"; Daiwa made the same call on the same day. On February 27, Macquarie Equities said that Pacific Dunlop was likely to underperform the market. On February 23, five broker reviewed their recommendations: Deutsch Bank said buy; UBS Warburg said hold; Salomon Smith Barney said match the market; Merril Lynch said accumulate; and ABN Amro said hold. Nomura Securities and Hartley Poynton have no recommendation, and Chase Ord Minnett thinks Pacific Dunlop will perform in line with the market."
end quote.

Stop losses are essential - absolutely - if you are going to get above average returns from the market. Investors can no longer afford to have a portfolio full of underperforming stocks. Losses must be cut short. Stockbrokers are your worst enemy in this respect.

Never hold, or buy into, a stock breaking lows on a monthly chart. PDP illustrates this.