by Raymond » Mon Sep 03, 2007 06:25:32 PM
The sky's the limit, all the money in the world is available to you - all you have to do is earn it. You give 'em all you got and they'll give you all you want; the only limitation is a self imposed limitation!
Now there are certain people who criticize this notion, and in fact they become very good at criticizing this - and everything else; but as for accomplishing anything: forget it!
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The above exhortations come from Bob Proctor, motivational speaker to many corporations and groups; sort of a scaled down local Tony Robbins.
I noticed your last admonition about the imperative of saving, which is apparently no. 29 in your series of blogposts or infomercials, I dunno which. Irrespective, not much to argue with there except for the part about "Your success is guaranteed." I'm not sure if the guarantee refers to the fact that if people put a small pile of money away regularly, they will inevitably come up with a big pile - not too much too argue with there. But if you mean that once they have a big pile of money and then invest it, then their success is guaranteed, I don't know about that.
Of course, the best way of getting ahead financially is to invest in "something," but every investment has its risks or it wouldn't be an investment. No risk, no return.
One aspect you leave out is that most investors have little inclination and or ability to pick wise investments and generally leave it up to their advisor or broker. Not usually a bad idea, but from my observations and experience with a lot of brokers, not the best one either. I get the news letters from Zacks and various other publications, and despite their hype, if you follow their recommendations and note the results months or years later, it's well known you're in for some real eye openers. Much better to stick with investments whose fields you are familiar with rather than relying on shallow sales effrontery. Wasn't that the first rule of Buffet or just plain common sense? Equally important is keeping up with the company you anticipate in investing in, it's industry and the MOOD of the market by reading DAILY papers like the Financial Post and not assuming your advisor will do it for you. Even if the advisor did, they're often more likely to be wrong than a well read investor from my experience.
I mentioned this to a couple of friends who recently lost perhaps $70,000 on 2 stocks. One store manager spent $60,000 on a pharmaceutical "hot tip" he got from his broker/(ex)friend and another lost over $8,000 on derivatives from a high tech company
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In the first case, the hot tip proved to be like most others - hot air. And so this fellow, if you can believe it, spent $60,000 of his retirement money on 10,000 shares of a pharmaceutical stock without knowing a single thing about the company he was investing in or the products it makes.
In the second case - my best friend actually - despite having a sophisticated job in financial services himself, bought the derivatives on the advice of senior manager of a high tech electronics company, who he's also friends with (or was). Unfortunately, the tech manager neglected to tell him the company had just announced that day, it had been served with a major lawsuit (which they lost big time). I noticed that strong rumors of the impending lawsuit were mentioned in the National Post the day before. I was at a complete loss as to why neither one had checked this out. My buddy, along with myself, had taken the stock broker's course some time previously. In fact, he did so well in it, the IDA gave him an award for having the top mark. And yet, he neglected to perform even the most basic groundwork before putting down his money.
I could go on "ad nauseum ad infinitum ad absurdam" about dozens of these cases to illustrate that relying on someone else to do your homework for you can have unfortunate consequences. Yes, investing in the market is surely the way to go; but without due diligence (which many don't have), your success is NOT guaranteed.
As you may have noticed, this website doesn't tend to attract a financially sophisticated demographic. It's mostly people who are having trouble making ends meet and they need help dealing with unconscionable bill collectors who are pouncing all over them looking for financial roadkill. Surely, you realize that since you mention in a previous incarnation that you were a bill collector yourself.
It's a free country with free enterprise; however, I'm not sure how admirable it is using the forum to troll for business using sales pitches and financial jargon that would be ill suited to the majority of its participants. One of the first rules taught to an investment advisor or broker is to know your client and not induce them to make investments that are inappropriate for their situation. An investment may be inappropriate for them, not only because of it's attendant level of risk, given their financial state, but also may be inadvisable because they're out of their league when it comes to understanding what they are getting into. So firing a lot of technical investment jargon trying to cajole them to purchasing stocks in industries about which they know nothing and probably never will (I think) crosses the border of conscionability.
Ray