Investing Whiplash: Looking for Closure with Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

As investors, we are often quick to claim credit for our successes and equally quick to blame others for our failures, and I am no exception. While I am sorely tempted to view what has happened at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) as vindication of my value judgments, I know better. I got lucky in terms of timing, catching a market correction and one targeted at tech stocks, and I am inclined to believe that is the main reason why my Apple and Amazon positions have made me money in the last two months. With Amazon, in particular, there is little that has happened in the last two months that would represent the catalysts that I saw in my initial analysis, since it was government actions and regulatory pushback that I saw as the likely triggers for a correction. With Apple, I do have a longer history and a better basis for believing that this is market bipolarity at play, with the stock price over shooting its value, after good news, and over correcting after bad news, but nothing that has happened to the company in the last two month would explain the correction. Needless to say, I will bank my profits, even if they are entirely fortuitous, but I will not delude myself into chalking this up to my investing skills. It is better to be lucky than good!