When the conversation lags at your New Year's Eve Party and a dead silence descends on the group you're with, just casually offer this little line:
"Even with the home mortgage debacle, I made $1.7 million in the stock market this year."
Of course, what you don't want to mention is that in order to arrive at that figure you added up only the totals for up days. Do not mention that adding up the tally from the negative days suggests a loss of $1.73 million, for a net loss of about $30k. It was an extremely volatile year. Any fool can lose money and if you're eager to impress strangers, there is no need to get into investment return details.
(Want to know how the stock market really works? Look here for a hilarious explanation.)
R World (Ron Davison muses aloud)
Human nature Ron. When we used to go to Las Vegas once a year for golf, food, drink and some gambling, all of us talked about the hits, not the net result, unless that was sufficiently positive.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year!
Came here from Chesca's. Very nice blog. Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. It confirmed what I have always believed about the stock market.
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDeletein Vegas it's called gambling - on Wall Street it's called investing.
Mimi,
Thanks for stopping by - it's pretty cool to have a peace monger stop by.
Saint Nick,
Glad you liked the cartoon - consider it small payback for the humor you share on your blog.