Friday, August 17, 2007

Testing the Water

What do fish and stocks have in common? Hmmm. You can say both stink. What I had in mind was how I have literally been testing the water this week. My betta fish is sick and I keep testing his water, trying to regulate his tank so he can get well, live long and prosper. (Betta Release 1.0 is three fish years, which equals about 35 human years. Still young.)

The stock market is sick. The Fed has been trying to regulate those turbulent waters. These wild Tsunami swings are tough to take. I wanted to buy RIMM (Research in Motion, aka Blackberry) before Monday. I can reveal now that it splits 3 for 1 Monday. It's waaaaay too expensive at $200 per share. But, as I suspected it closed up $22.50 per share today, closing at $220. I'm sick because I should have bought RIMM back in 2005. I actually thought it was too expensive then. Ha! It's up about 2000% from then. I have owned AMZN (Amazon) since the beginning. I rode that baby from a $20 stock to a $400 stock, watched it split (several times), collapse and now come back as one of the alleged "four horseman" of tech stocks. AMZN has been very, very good to me. I owned AAPL, another of the "horsemen" (these are the four.) It was the very first stock I ever owned (1980's!) I could be Warren Buffet if I had kept that one. I sold it in the 1990's when I thought Macs and Jobs were washed up. Ha! Didn't see iPods and iPhones coming. It trades around $125 a share after who knows how many splits. I'd love to own GOOG (Google) but it has never been less than $200 a share for the average person and currently trades at -- get this -- $500 a share! When will it split? People will go crazy and it will immediately run amok again.

What will I do when I retire? Come on. I could keep an eye on the market, which is far too time consuming for a working person. I can travel and write (more likely.) Or, I could renounce my materialistic ways, meditate and teach T'ai Chi. I'll be doing the Buddhist thing tomorrow -- a retreat. Let's see which wins out ;) For now, I'll just keep testing the waters.

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