STOCK MARKET

I play a game each night with my daughter's toes: "This little piggy went to market. This little piggy went home. This little piggy had roast beef. This little piggy had none... because the first little piggy had gone to the market and invested their money in Asian Futures."

What a topsy-turvey week it has been if you play the stock market, "play" being not so fun a term right now. I don't know which person has it worse these days, the guy who has, and is losing, lots of money in the market, or the currently smug guy like me who feels so superior because he had nothing to invest to begin with. Heck, just last night me and my pals in the Lottery line were laughing at how stupid people are to throw away their good money on the stock market.

This past week has also been a wakeup call for a lot of people. Every once in a while something comes along to shake us up and make us realize what is important in life. I remember it was like that when Hurricane Hugo hit my hometown in South Carolina. I felt the same way when McDonald's cancelled their McRib promotion. Concerning our current situation, I don't really fear our nation will fall under the weight of financial turmoil. I just have this morbid terror that somewhere in Time Magazine I will see a picture of Bill Gates and Donald Trump playing Checkers in their underwear while eating Cheetos and drinking Chek cola.

I know how in times like these people crave assurances and strength. And I feel a responsibility to my readership to do what I can to impart hope. So mom, here are are some do's and don't's on investing:

Do invest in anything bearing the name Speilberg. Don't invest in anything bearing the name Guido. Do invest in companies listed with the N.Y. Stock Exchange. Don't invest in companies listed on Hillary Clinton's Resume. Do invest in the stock market because it builds a better economic base for our country. Don't invest in the stock market because you liked that movie "Trading Places."

Hmmm. Is it suddenly ironic that they are called "Stock BROKERS?" Broker than who?

Let me finish with a parable. Once there was a village of people who had lots of rocks. They denied they had rocks. They pretended they didn't have rocks. They even complained that the rock piles they had were too small. Yet, even after trading their rocks for all they wanted or needed, they had so many left, they had to build secure f.d.i.c grass huts to store them. They even gave a portion of their rocks to the man in the secure grass huts for guarding them.

Then the man in the hut found a way to make the rocks make more little rocks. This was called compound interest. This was nice for a while, but this village had to invent something more to do with their rocks, because they had so many. Of course some villagers there had very little rocks or none at all. They lived in apartments.

So the villagers made a place where they could take their rocks and just move them around. Day or night others would move their rocks around. Sometimes their rock piles grew bigger. Sometimes their rock piles grew smaller. Seemingly this made the villagers very, very glad and they thought they should live happily ever after. And the moral of the story? Don't the villagers realize they're just rocks? It's not like they're money or something. -

-Billy Murphy 10/30/97