Right, people often look to companies like Intel, AMD, Nvidia and think 'If only I held!'

They don't look at 3DFX, Transmeta, Centillium, Virata, or the numerous other companies because they are dead in the graveyard of failed companies that have lost full valuation.

Depending on how much you invest in each, if you panic-buy/sell, etc changes all that. You're also ultimately betting on whether or not there will ever be another bubble/hype in the industry, and that you are betting wide enough into fully speculative companies like Nvidia instead of just aiming for power players. People forget that the market for luxury PC hardware barely existed at the time and was populated by a very small group of wealthy consumers. Expecting that to take off against the cheap prices of console offerings and against the technical know-how of assembling/disassembling PCs is closer to faith than any rationale.

Just by law of probability and total number of actual bagholders, the vast majority of people didn't bet that way. But I guess if you think you're special or have some lucrative insight into the industry, you might think you're an exception to that rule.