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Let's talk goals here for a second. Put aside all of the "15-year-time-horizon" gibberish and the "Nazz must be bottoming soon" chatter and listen to me. Why the heck would I, a preternaturally bullish fellow, caution investors for more than a year now to be careful with tech? Why would I, someone who ran the money of many of the wealthy people behind the great tech companies, be so strident? What's with me? Why don't I just go with the flow and tell you that "long term, we will be fine?" Why don't I just cast my lot with the Happy Talkers out there? Why did I feel compelled to dispute Larry "10,000 NDX" Kudlow? Why can't I just say what people want to hear: that we will be fine and that you can ride it out and that we are already near a bottom?

Because I don't believe it. Because it is a sin to see hard-earned money go up in smoke because of glib people who should know better but who are marketing when they should be preserving. Because, in the end, I want you in the game when it gets better, not out of it because you lost so much money.

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Remember, I am not a retail investor guy. I spent my whole life dealing with very rich people, the richest of the rich, and I learned a great deal from them. You know these younger fellows who come on television and say, "Hold on, because long term you will be all right" like they are in a trance or something?

Well, in the league I played in, that stuff never washed. People who have made big money in their lives worked hard for it. They know that it can be lost for them. They accept a certain amount of loss. But they don't tolerate the kind of pastings that some of these funds are delivering. Understand, I am not jumping up and down and saying, "Get the heck out of Fidelity's Contrafund." I am not happy with how Will Danoff is doing at Fidelity, but he isn't blowing you up. He is doing his best to preserve your capital while staying invested. You don't hear me calling Stansky at Magellan a war criminal. He's doing his best to preserve your capital. So is Foster Friess at Brandywine and so is Peter Langerman at Mutual Shares and Elizabeth Bramwell at her fund and Bob Olstein at his.

But how about these other folks? The ones who told you everything was fine at PMC-Sierra (PMCS:Nasdaq - news - boards) and Copper Mountain (CMTN:Nasdaq - news - boards) and Vignette (VIGN:Nasdaq - news - boards) and PlanetRx and Lifeminders (LFMN:Nasdaq - news - boards) and Commerce One (CMRC:Nasdaq - news - boards)? What about them? What were they doing?

Has it occurred to people yet that perhaps not everyone should be running their money? In the myriad discussions I had with people who have made fortunes -- the objective goal in this game when times are good -- you often hear about people who simply don't know what they heck they are doing. They are spoken about with contempt and scorn as gunners and one-trick ponies and people who have no sense of risk or downside. We laugh at these people.

Yet, they come on television and, like Robert Young playing Marcus Wellby MD, they play the role of portfolio managers and they look terrific. They are a bunch of actors. I swear I would like to get one of my acting friends to come on television and play the glib "Nazz is bottoming; we will all be fine in the end" mutual fund manager. After he spoke his lines I would then have him say, "Hey, man, I was just joking. The script said to say that. If I were you, I would high-tail it before it was too late."

Because that's what rich people do. And they didn't get rich being stupid about their money.

Random musings: Elsewhere Jim Seymour has an excellent piece about how Loudcloud (LDCL:Nasdaq - news - boards) got jammed down our throats and why the deal bombed. Won't you join Jim, Herb and me for an intraday RealMoney chat about Yahoo! and the free model?