Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Stock tips on the morning radio

This morning I was listening to the Allman and Smash in the Morning radio show on my way to work. That's a talk show generally oriented toward politics (on the conservative side), but they do go off in other directions, and Jamie Allman was talking this morning about how he fails to invest in companies he knows about.

Unfortunately, it was the kind of conversation that feeds people's belief that making money in the stock market is about making quick capital gains.

Jamie started off saying that he should have known to invest in Google at its Initial Public Offering or IPO because he went to some conference for investigative journalists about that time and all of them were using Google. Well, online Google itself was firmly established as the best search engine.

Then Jamie mentioned that way back in 1990 or 1991 he lived next door to a guy who told him once that his brother in Israel or some other Mideastern country was working for a company called Adobe, and Jamie should invest in that. Jamie blew his neighbor off, but now knows that Adobe is a great software company.

So Jamie was lamenting about his lost chances to make money, but added that he didn't lose money either. He just hadn't made any. I think a lot of tech stock investors would like to trade places with him.

Unfortunately, Smash didn't help point this out. He added that he bought MTV a long time ago, then years later sold it to be his house in Chesterfield (a wealthy suburb of the St Louis area).

Ah, if only it were so easy to get good stock tips. We'd all be rich and wouldn't have to work :)

Jamie, read AMERICAN SUCKER by David Denby (lost a million dollars in NASDAQ stocks) and A MATHEMATICIAN LOOKS AT THE STOCK MARKET by John Allen Paulos (lost large amounts on WorldCom) and be glad you haven't lost money.