Definitive Guide To Stock Investment

After more than 30 years of active investment in stocks using a number of strategies, I believe I have a wealth of experience to share with the neophytes.  (Yea, right!)  I have hold on (long term) and day trade stocks, I have bought / sold puts / calls, blue chip or penny stocks and almost everything in between, I have invested in almost all industries, and I have made and lost money.  So here is my definitive guide to investment in no particular order.  They are all life lessons I have learned, a few very costly!

1. Long Term Investment - if a broker tells you that you should be in for long term, they are basically telling you that the market is so volatile that all your investments will probably tank but because you are in for the long haul, you will not blame or sue him or her.  Corollary: your broker does not know what he or she is talking about.  More corollary: when you are ready to cash in the money after a long term of investment, the value may have dropped by then even though it could also have risen many folds!
2. More Long Term Investment - if you are not using a broker and long term investment seems to make sense to you, you are probably lazy.  You just don't want to bother with the research of the companies you have invested in, what people are buying or selling or needing or wanting, who are the real competitors, etc. etc., and you are just hoping that money will grow like rabbits.  Corollary: you are in dreamland.
3. Timing Is Everything - It's amazing how many brokers will tell you that as long as you are in for the long haul, it does not matter at what price you are buying.  That is not true.  Timing is everything.  You never know how things are going to change.  So be careful if a stock keeps climbing, either make a move early in the game or wait till it drops.  All momentum stocks eventually need a break.  There are big breaks and there are small breaks, and there are always big breaks!  Corollary: patience is everything.
4. Investment Newsletters - don't trust any investment newsletters that come across your desk or your browser.  Everyone has his or her own agenda, even the author who claims he or she has no money invested in the stock they write about or plan to purchase any.  No one sees the future, so no one knows what will happen.  The only difference among the writers is how well they can write to touch something in you!  Corollary: watch out where your weak spot is.  One of these newsletters will get you.
5. Stock Investment is Ethical Gambling - the world is so volatile now that there is no logic in the market, so even if you have the time and resource to do it, and if you have good resources of information (which the previous points basically indicate that this is impossible), your investment is no different than going to the casinos.  Corollary: you have, and we all do, have a tendency to gamble.
6. Something Bigger Out There – if you think the market is just driven by buyers and sellers, big and small companies, brokers and brokerage houses, you need to think again!  There are much larger institutions, like governments, countries, very very very rich and powerful people and organizations out there that can manipulate the markets beyond what you can ever think or imagine.  Corollary: you are only a pawn (or prawn, or even better a shrimp) in this ocean of sharks.

So what is the conclusion?  Eat, drink, and be merry.  Enjoy your money, use it, spend it, give it away, and be free of all these toils and troubles.

Nice Quote

Saw this at the entrance of the Norlin Library at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Blackberry Bold Battery Overdrained

One thing you should never do with the Blackberry Bold (9000) is to wait till the last moment before you charge the battery. I did that a couple of times and it caused me enormous pain. I got this white screen of death (WSOD) which is not easy to get rid of. The problem is that even though you may try to recharge the battery, the blackberry may think it is charging the battery by showing a white screen with a battery and a lightening bolt on it, but in fact, is not. If you take the battery out, the system does recognize that the battery is gone, and shows a white screen with a battery and a red line across it. So you may think the hardware is detecting the battery and thus charging it correctly. But there have been cases when I had the WSOD with the battery and lightening bolt on it and I "charged" the battery overnight and nothing happened!

So here is one solution that worked for me: take out the sim card, plug the blackberry without the battery into the wall unit, wait till the red led light comes on, then before the white screen comes on, put the battery into the blackberry. Hopefully, you will get a clock icon and this will start the system. The whole idea is to keep the blackberry from using any battery power to connect to the cell network, and try to get to a stage to start charging the battery. Now this procedure may still fail because the battery is so drained that it does not have enough power to restart the system, and the blackberry operating system is so stupid not having realized this and recharge the battery before trying to get onto the network! In that case, repeat this procedure a couple of times and hopefully the system restarts. Sometimes it helps to leave the battery alone for a few hours before trying this again!

QuickTax Scam

I purchased this product online last year and specifically indicated that I did not want to automatically renew my purchase of this product this year. Not that the Quicktax 2008 was bad, but I just did not want to see an automatic charge on my account. I rather wait till tax time, when I need the program, then purchase one after checking out the available products on the market. Well, I just checked my credit card statement and I have this automatic charge from Intuit Canada for $44.79. I am just absolutely disgusted about this and consider this a very dishonest business practice. After three tries of calling the company, I got hold of a manager (Tina) who told me that the company sends out email every year to their customers (not just those who are in an automatic renewal program) to automatically charge them for the new version of the product, and if they do not want the product, they have to email back and cancel it. I remembered seeing an email from Intuit and deleted it without reading it, and I guess that was how I was charged. So beware of this scam!!

Where God Left His Shoes (Movie)

This movie is about a homeless family trying to find shelter during one Christmas. The bulk of the movie is about Frank trying to land a job before 6pm on Christmas eve in order for him to secure an apartment for his family. Unfortunately, every job he applied turned out to be a dead end street, and the audience is left wondering how the movie would end .. would someone be kind enough to offer him a job, would a long lost relative rescue them, would he have a windfall of good fortune, etc.? No, the movie has nothing to do with it. It portrays quite an inside look of a "down and out" man fighting for his family and for his own dignity. It shows that at the deepest part of a man, he would do anything to provide for his family. He would keep fighting even to the point of doing the most humiliating job to provide for the family. In one of the most moving scenes in the movie, Frank took up a cup and went begging on the street while trying to hide his face behind his jacket. He was obviously embarrassed by his mode of earning a living given that he was formerly a boxer. Then his son also came along, begging alongside him, co-laboring with each other, giving each other support, (while at the same time, trying to compete and outdo each other ... typical males!)

There is also a part of the movie where the son eventually broke down from the harshness of life, by the seeming neglect from the father, the lack of emotional support which he so desperately needed. Though he probably understood the maleness, as Frank explained to him, that may have prevented Frank from showing his love more explicitly, his son had to wrestle with this as he learned the language of love from man to man. Frank also eventually learned how to love his son. In the last scene, he whispered to his son that he loved him, and there was such a contentment in his son that he could then rest peacefully even in a subway train. It is a great movie about man, manhood, and the struggle of being a man.

Where God may seem to have abandoned this family, the movie shows that by sticking together, the family actually grows more intimately together. Hardship does not have to tear a family apart, it can draw the family together instead. As long as the family is committed to live and grow together, willing to adjust and adapt to one another, there is hope. Frank has said it prophetically early in the movie "... it ain't where God left his shoes ..". He realized that each new day is a possibility, and that there is hope, that he could have a chance to keep his family (rather than seeing them go back to his wife's ex.). But he was wrong on basing this hope on the job / apartment to keep the family together. He eventually learned that it was commitment, the love in the family, that keeps them together.

The Soloist (Movie)

I was intrigued by the jacket description of this movie at the local video store the other night. The description says that this movie is based on a true story of a LA Times reporter (Steve Lopez) and a talented homeless street musician (Nathaniel Ayers) who turned out to be a Julliard drop-out. The movie is about how Steve tried to help Nathaniel to "get back on his feet". However, those who are "down and out" like Nathaniel usually have a history that is often hidden from others, and hardly understood by others. As much as we try, in our sincerity, to help others to have a better life, or to become "normal", we are often blindsided by the demons and struggles they wrestle with.

What I like most about the movie is not how much effort Steve undertook to help Nathaniel, nor the remarkable recovery of Nathaniel in the process (in fact, quite the lack of it), but the persistence, the loyalty, the hope that inspire me. It is a triumphant movie about failure. It causes us to question our motives of all our efforts to "help" our neighbors ... is it really what they want, or is it for my accomplishments and me feeling good about myself. In the end, it is all about human relationship, that the "problems" that we see or we think that we have may not be all that important. We don't necessarily need to fix all my problems or my neighbors' problems. What is important is that we all need someone to walk alongside, to be with us, to encourage us as we all make our silly mistakes in life.

Desire and Satisfaction

I have long espoused the idea that desiring for an object can be more satisfying than when it is finally being acquired. The longing of something that I have always wanted is often times more pleasurable than when I finally get what I have wanted. This happened to me whether it was a laptop, a piece of jewelry, even an achievement like a degree or a position. (I often used this argument to try to convince my kids not to buy at first impulse, but they don't seem to buy it!) Anyway, I may have found someone who finally echoes with how I feel, and much further beyond. CS Lewis wrote about this "intense longing" in the preface to third edition of Pilgrim Regress:

Other desires are felt as pleasures only if satisfaction is expected in the near future : hunger is pleasant only while we know (or believe) that we are soon going to eat. But this desire even when there is no hope of possible satisfaction, continues to be prized, and even to be preferred to anything else in the world, by those who have once felt it. This hunger is better than any other fullness; this poverty better than all other wealth.

He even went on to talk about "a peculiar mystery about the object of this Desire", that if one were to claim that this object can be acquired, he would be deluding himself ... "that the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given". This is what Romanticism is to Lewis.