Tuesday, September 30, 1997
You Can Lead Them
to Water...
by Dan Coyle
([email protected])
A friend of mine had heard that I invest in the stock market. About a year ago, she asked me how I got started. I told her I found the Motley Fool. I read everything I could and I got my calculator out and crunched some numbers. I urged her to start at the Fool because it's useful and funny.
A year went by before I saw her again. She was anxious to talk about the stock market, so I assumed she had excellent results to tell me. She told me about three very risky companies she had bought for a few dollars a share on a "hot tip" from her broker. She actually said "hot tip." Alarms started going off in my head.
She went on to tell me about several other companies she bought and sold in the past year at $45 a trade. The alarms got louder and I was afraid she might be able to hear them. I asked her about her investing goals. She said she wanted to double her money. I could tell she had just thought of that answer. Apparently it was a question that hadn't occurred to her before. She justified these trades by saying they weren't very risky because her broker recommended them.
"Jen," I said to her, "did you go to the Motley Fool?"
"Yes!" she replied, "and you were right, it's very funny!"
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