Shopping for Investment Services- the tragedy
© Reginald Vickers
So there I was, a broke college kid, playing a grown-up game. I found that picking stocks was like picking horses. If you didn't know the horses you were betting on, you'd probably loose your shirt. But if you knew something about the horses you were betting on, you'd probably bet more money and end up losing your pants, too. I read and studied the market better than I did for my classes. I'd write down my picks and pretend trade. My "what-if" $1000 turned into a "could have been" $9000 in 2 months. I thought I had the Midas touch. I would come in early and all these executives and I would sit around and talk about our stocks (mine were pretend, and their could have been as well, who knows). Dave, another shipping clerk, would hang on every word we said. One day Dave came to work and said, "guess what I did?" I said, "built a tree house for your daughter." Dave was recently married and had a 2-month-old baby- he had already bought her a tricycle), it sounded like a good guess to me. He said, "No, I just took a second mortgage on my house and bought $20,000 worth of stock in White trucking just like you did." The silence was deafening. This was a man who had saved every penny he had to buy his daughter the things he never had and all on a shipping clerks salary. I never had been so speechless before in my life. I was angry, shocked, and felt like I was an accomplice to his stupidity. My talk was all pretend, Dave's was everything he owned. The sad thing was that his stock went up, way up. Dave was hooked from that moment on. But within, 3 months, not only did Dave lose everything he had worked for his whole life, but eventually his wife left him and the last I heard he was in a mental institute.
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