Those Wall Street Wankers

Investing:

Anyone who has ever tried to learn about investing in the stock market undoubtedly knows what I'm talking about when I say that IT'S HARD. I think it's because of two reasons:

i. There's SO MANY views and methods

ii. TRUSTABLE sources are very RARE. I am getting to the point of believing that they are maybe an impossibility.

I don't think I'd be exaggerating when I say that 90% of investing advice is self serving and the other 9.9% is just crap.

The closest anyone came to being a good source was a small group called The Motley Fool. The Gardner Bros. started an online forum in the mid-90's which quickly became very popular and that I really believe was for the well being of individual investors. They wrote a few books at this time and lately I've been reading their first book.

Unfortunately, if you now go to their site http://www.fool.com/, you will soon see that they have become just like any other shady wall street character, with the simple straightforward articles of old replaced by a barrage of different strategies, many of them spouting ideas opposite of last week's. What's worse is now they have a SERIES of paid newsletters and EVERY ARTICLE ends in a lengthy pitch to sell one of their many pricey newsletters.

A Catholic Critic of the Catholic Church, Lord Acton, said it best:
"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I thought "No, Lord Acton. Not David and Tom! They're too genuine, too nice, and too honest!"
Then I looked into Acton's quote. He was talking about the pope.
If even the pope can't be trusted, then my beloved Tom and David aren't above this powerful trend that power has.

So What have I come up with?

What I've learned so far (after sifting through tons of useless and dishonest info):
For most people index, index, index is the way to go. Buying other mutual funds is WORSE than throwing a good sized chunk of your money in the garbage! (Because if you're in a non-index fund you're throwing the spineless idiot fund managers your money).

If you don't know or don't care about investing just know one thing:
Vanguard No-Load Index Fund

Really, for ANYONE: you should spend half an hour and read the first few chapters of the Motley Fool Investment Guide and you'll know what I'm talking about. Seriously, a half hour now ESPECIALLY if you're in college could make ten years of difference later (retirement.)

I think you should also know the very basics of
1) 401ks
2)Roth IRAs

For some, it may sound boring, but really- minutes now could mean differences of hundreds of thousands of dollars for you in a few decades!!!

I would now like to tell you about Brett Ripley's monthly newsletter. For just 27.50/month you can have...
:)

Thursday is as Thursday does

On my mind for Thursday:

1) Boom goes the dynamite!! It's my last day of work for the summer! Even though my job was very easy, there's still something depressing about staring at a computer for 8-10 straight hours for 5 days of the week. Maybe when I come back in January I'll get out into the mill more!

2) I'm going to Canterbury Downs tonight. I've got everything packed in my car and ready to go, so right at 5 I'm hopping on the interstate to the cities to visit Bri-guy and Lisa in my new house!!

3) There's an almost too good to be true Pracs study this next week, but I don't think I'll do it. My time doing nothing at home with the fam at this point is priceless!

4) This blog: I do intend to get alot deeper with my posts in terms of thoughts and ideas from this summer that are fizzling in my mind, but I want to take it fairly slow for now as I think the "surface" items in my life are important (and in many instances more important) as the ideas that fill my mind.

5) With that mindset, I might buy a CD. For those of you who know me, you know how big of a deal this is. There's a band called "The Format" and it's been years since a band has come out with enough good stuff to fill an entire album with "buyability".



Going home soon!
-Brett