Bear, Bull, and Crap
About the best thing that ever happened when I quit my job at the vet clinic, what would amount to the five years of no Thanksgiving, no Christmas and no New Year, and no weekends sleeping in, was $3500 worth of 401K funds I had to rollover into an IRA.
Woohwee, 3500 dollars. I could buy a small car with that kind of money.
Still, it was money. There was the question of "what the hell to do with it?". Afterall, I was going to be in the Carribbean and watching money grow is like watching grass grow; slow and painful and I might as well do it in a tropical place. Eventually, the money made it to TD Waterhouse where it sat for another year or so, essentially in limbo.
Then a friend in med school, who was, in his previous life, some partner at Earnst & Young, planted the incredible idea of investing it in stocks!
The formidable, inapproachable, inescapable Stock Market. I almost shit a brick. It was safe, he assured me. Just invest in things you would buy daily, like ketchup. Everyone has to have some ketchup.
Ketchup. Wasn't too bad of an idea. Didn't sound too threatening and sure, every fridge in the whole US of A has a bottle of ketchup.
So I looked up Heinz, the all American-German company. It had ketchup and also relish, mustard, baby food, steak sauce, BBQ sauce and god!, even soya sauce! Talk about diversify.
So I call the TD Waterhouse 800 number.
The agent answers and asks what stock I would like to invest in.
I say, why, Heinz.
Ok. How many stocks?
Ten, I say.
There was a small choking noise from the other side of the receiver. Ten? He says.
Ok, 20, I say.
20. Twenty shares of Heinz stock at $15.05 per share, he says.
Yes.
What would you like me to do? He says.
Huh? Nerve wracking.
What would you like to do? This time he sounds urgent, like a bomb is about to explode under his ass.
It is imperative that you tell me what to do, he says.
Ah! Is this man insane?
Miss! He says, you have to tell me to buy in order to lock in the price!
Tic-tock.
Buy! Buy! I said, before the damn bastard explodes over the receiver.
Buy. Congratulations, you are the owner of 20 shares of Heinz stock.
Wow. Bear, Bull, what the hell did I know about the stock market except that you can rapidly become very, very rich and in the same breath, you can also become very, very poor?
After the Heinz episode, I realized that I could have saved myself the embarrassment and traded stocks online so I don't have to suffer the indignity of telling someone I am going to buy 20 shares of something so that when it makes some money, I can use the profits to dine for a year at MacDonald's.
Still, if I lost $200, it wouldn't be as bad as losing $200,000. That's my story and I am sticking to it.
So, I promptly bought 10 shares in Exxon, the oil company and 10 shares in Intel, the semiconductor people, after learning that the new Apple computers will now house Intel chips instead of IBM ones and then forgot about the whole stock market and the Bear and the Bull fighting each other, or some shit like that.
I recently opened up my TD Waterhouse statement. My $3500 is no longer $3500. Instead, the statement balance said $4100. Ha.
Oil prices gone up? Buy more oil! Every little penny will only go into my pocket. I will be a millionaire in like a thousand years.
Woohwee, 3500 dollars. I could buy a small car with that kind of money.
Still, it was money. There was the question of "what the hell to do with it?". Afterall, I was going to be in the Carribbean and watching money grow is like watching grass grow; slow and painful and I might as well do it in a tropical place. Eventually, the money made it to TD Waterhouse where it sat for another year or so, essentially in limbo.
Then a friend in med school, who was, in his previous life, some partner at Earnst & Young, planted the incredible idea of investing it in stocks!
The formidable, inapproachable, inescapable Stock Market. I almost shit a brick. It was safe, he assured me. Just invest in things you would buy daily, like ketchup. Everyone has to have some ketchup.
Ketchup. Wasn't too bad of an idea. Didn't sound too threatening and sure, every fridge in the whole US of A has a bottle of ketchup.
So I looked up Heinz, the all American-German company. It had ketchup and also relish, mustard, baby food, steak sauce, BBQ sauce and god!, even soya sauce! Talk about diversify.
So I call the TD Waterhouse 800 number.
The agent answers and asks what stock I would like to invest in.
I say, why, Heinz.
Ok. How many stocks?
Ten, I say.
There was a small choking noise from the other side of the receiver. Ten? He says.
Ok, 20, I say.
20. Twenty shares of Heinz stock at $15.05 per share, he says.
Yes.
What would you like me to do? He says.
Huh? Nerve wracking.
What would you like to do? This time he sounds urgent, like a bomb is about to explode under his ass.
It is imperative that you tell me what to do, he says.
Ah! Is this man insane?
Miss! He says, you have to tell me to buy in order to lock in the price!
Tic-tock.
Buy! Buy! I said, before the damn bastard explodes over the receiver.
Buy. Congratulations, you are the owner of 20 shares of Heinz stock.
Wow. Bear, Bull, what the hell did I know about the stock market except that you can rapidly become very, very rich and in the same breath, you can also become very, very poor?
After the Heinz episode, I realized that I could have saved myself the embarrassment and traded stocks online so I don't have to suffer the indignity of telling someone I am going to buy 20 shares of something so that when it makes some money, I can use the profits to dine for a year at MacDonald's.
Still, if I lost $200, it wouldn't be as bad as losing $200,000. That's my story and I am sticking to it.
So, I promptly bought 10 shares in Exxon, the oil company and 10 shares in Intel, the semiconductor people, after learning that the new Apple computers will now house Intel chips instead of IBM ones and then forgot about the whole stock market and the Bear and the Bull fighting each other, or some shit like that.
I recently opened up my TD Waterhouse statement. My $3500 is no longer $3500. Instead, the statement balance said $4100. Ha.
Oil prices gone up? Buy more oil! Every little penny will only go into my pocket. I will be a millionaire in like a thousand years.
posted by Hello, this is McKWong MD at 10:17 AM
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