No luck on the street today, but a $20 check from CrowdPicks.com was waiting in my mailbox, mitigating the sting of rejection a bit. I also had some luck in the stock market, selling my shares of Pfizer at a $1000 profit. When I got the boot from the Exchange on Halloween of '07, I wisely moved all my 401k money into cash, since there would be no more money flowing into the account to mitigate any stock losses and since I expected the market to tank. I looked like a genius. Then I made the dumb mistake of getting back in too soon, only halfway through the meltdown. I bought Bank of America, AIG, and Citibank, thinking they'd seen their bottom. I'm way in the hole on all three. Even GE, one of America's all-time stalwarts, sank like a rock. Fortunately, it has fought back, although I'm still down quite a bit on it. Intel and Verizon have broken even for me. Of course, all those stocks pay dividends, which helps allay the losses. My track record is one of mediocrity, a little better than a CD yields. When I got a movie from Netflix today I was reminded of what a jackass I was for not having bought stock in it, especially since I'd been using and loving it well before it went public. It is well over 200 these days, up 15 points yesterday alone. It, Google and Snapple remind me what a coward I am. And every time I see someone listening to an IPOD I'm reminded what a dunce I was for getting out of Apple when it was trading 25. I lost a thousand and would have made perhaps ten thousand had I stuck with it. It's no comfort knowing others have similar tales.
Read Vic's stories, free: http://vicfortezza.homestead.com/
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