[stevepaa]

Personal perspective
I have invested two groups of money in my lifetime. Money for retirement and money for college education of three kids.

My personal money history: day traded in late 70’s and made maybe 10%, lost a year’s pay in early 80’s following advice of stockbrokers, lost half a year’s pay in the early 90’s trying to do charting, lost 10K in a real estate Limited Partnership in the mid 90’s. Recently, I bought Lucent in the 30’s- yeah bad choice. Past retirement age and I have only my house paid for and 50k in an IRA. Now pause for a second, and think what losing a year’s pay early on would do to you.

Kid’s education money I put in US treasuries in the late 70’s, did well, sold in late in 80’s and bought a condo to rent, did okay, sold it as kids started to go to college in late 90s, and put the money in highly regarded mutual funds. Yeah, you guessed it, they now all have capital losses on their income taxes and we now have Stafford and PLUS loans to pay off.

Now my bother in law is even worse off, he has lost everything in the market and his big pension from his first job of 25 years got nicked by 34% when the company failed and their just wasn’t enough in the kitty and all his company stock was worthless. He did the American patriotic thing and bought stock in his company. It was Pan Am.

I do have one friend who did okay when he left the rocket company I worked for in 95, went into chip manufacturing, got his stock options, sold before the bust and is now retired. That was a wise decision as the rocket company closed its’ doors last year. I was fortunate in that I left in 95 to go work for a defense contractor higher up the food chain.

Another friend did not choose quite so luckily, was just laid off from his electronics job, and will probably exhaust all his stock option money getting a new job this year.

Bottom line for me, any of you in the 20-40 years range who think that the stock market is the answer may be fooling yourselves. From my experience, I would only trust real estate and US treasuries.

Parting thoughts;

I think the Social Security system has put the money in the best place it could have gone-investing in the US.

Privatization only supports the brokers and the very wealthy.

Think of brokers as falcons and you are the doves, and the very wealthy as the falconers.

Any time a broker calls you with a good idea for investing-sell.