[The following story is somewhat true and some of the names have been changed to protect the identities of not only the innocent but also the stupid. The guilty will obviously be named and shamed accordingly]
As many of you know or will come to learn, I am a man of various occupations. Occupations meaning "things that occupy my time". As Founder, CFO and head of Marketing for MuTeCoRe (Multifarious Tetraspherical Conglomerated Realmspace), Co-Founder of Chemland Industries, Founder and President of Beats By Man Productions, and recording artist Manny Stiles among my other time-consuming interests (amateur botanist, amateur Movie & TV critic, ordained minister, occasional blogger) I am quite a busy fellow.
In reality I have only one true occupation; a profession in the very rigid and forcibly conforming industry of investments. As a stock broker I must portray the role of a rule follower from 9am to 5pm (not my real hours, but you get the point) but that little outside-of-the-box thinker breaks free at 5:00:01pm. [side note: has anyone ever seen this 'box' everyone seems to be in?]
The key to this is that this investment industry is my primary source of income, and sole source of my medical insurance for myself and my family, so I gotta play by the rules. Running your own music recording and production company may be rewarding to my soul, but without the backing of those huge soul-free corporations (takes $ to make $) it kinda hurts the pocket.
One of my employers rules that I must abide by is that I have agreed to not give investment advice. But what is 'investment advice'? What are the dangers of investment advice? Today I will take a very career-threatening stab at answering these very questions.If I told you to buy 1000 shares of Manny Stiles Incorporated because we have invented and are about to get FDA approval on a new cancer-curing soft-drink "2Mur Free" and "Diet 2Mur Free", you'd think "hey, that's good investment advice". So if you bought those shares, you'd be set to make a fortune as would I as the inventor, marketer, distributor (and I'd expect kickback aka 'lil sumtin' sumtin' for giving you such awesome advice). If it turned out that it only cured cancer in laboratory mice - that would be 'bad advice', since you'd be out your investment and well, you're not a lab mouse. (No one really cares about solving the problems of lab animals).
Being that no one can tell the future accurately and at a consistent rate (my crystal ball is in the shop), it should be deemed that ANY investment advice is not good advice. No matter how much sense it makes [Don't invest in yellow snow], no matter how logical the marketing campaign sounds ['everyone needs a thneed'], no matter how much someone promises or e-mails you [Manny Stiles' next album "I hate my stupid, ugly, smelly fans" is going straight to #1!!!]. Only you and Father Time can decide if any investment is worth making. It's YOUR money. There may be plenty of quality investment advisors out there (FAR and few between - my personal opinion), but they WILL make you pay for advice. Alot! Maybe their worth it, maybe they aren't - but who am I to give YOU advice?
If they say buy THIS Inc. and/or sell THAT Inc... one of three things can happen (these '3 things' - a topic for later- happen in any/every situation in life)
1) it gets better:
this works out for you and the advice giver. You get money, they get money - AND your trust
2) it gets worse:
this sucks for you. You're out money, advice giver still gets paid. Trust level goes back into the '3 things' machine
3) it stays the same:
no harm, no foul. Maybe you understood the risk, maybe you don't care. But even when it 'stays the same' things still change.
The point to notice here is - if it works for you, as long as that advice wasn't illegal (see Martha Stewart and a slew of others) GREAT...lucky you - go pay your taxes and smile, you're a winner.
If it doesn't work for you - Oh crap! Stress, lost sleep, worrying, finding a lawyer to sue the bastard, now ya gotta press to make the $ back. (there's an old saying about investing - I'll ad lib it - "It's costs a lot to learn how to make $$$ investing; you either pay for years and years of schooling or you learn the hard way"
As for those "get rich quick" schemes, "guaranteed" ways of making money on the market and "new" ways to play the market thanks to technology... think about it - if you came up with a way to seriously make $$$ who would you tell? Anyone? Maybe friends and family, but REALLY quietly as to not ruin it, right? You wouldn't e-mail it to mass lists of unknown people, you CERTAINLY wouldn't have an infomercial. If it was a true money maker, you wouldn't NEED to sell the idea to make $$$, you'd just make the money! The only 'get rich quick' scheme that works is selling a stupid idea to stupid and gullible people.
The stock markets and investing are older than you or anyone you know (that includes my 101 year old Grandmother), so it's already been tried - no matter what technology comes out, it's already been done. Now HERE'S some investment advice you can really use - Invest your time - with your family, doing the things you love, doing the things that bring you joy, follow your bliss - it's worth WAY more than any financial investment can ever bring you... you aren't going to recall your good and bad investments on your death bed... if you are, I hope your stockbroker (who has lived off your commissions) is beside you - you deserve each other...
So for these reasons among others, my agreement with my employer frowns upon me (read: will beat me up and kick me to the curb) for giving investment advice in any manner. So don't ask me, I don't know, I won't tell you and you don't want to know ( for the truth: send $500 to Manny Stiles, P.O Box... I'm KIDDING!!!)
1 comment:
my diggy hurts! j-me strange
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