Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 24, 2023

I worked for a dot com in 2000. We went public in March 2000, just as the bubble was bursting. The price we employees were able to buy the the stocks were $24 per share but we could not sell when we wanted.Couple weeks after it went public, the stock peaked at $116; one year later it was at $5.

I knew 2 people that were brilliant and were so smart. they both created programs to automatically buy and sell stocks for them. 1 was a day trader, and the other even held classes in his home. They both retired, they BOTH went back to work when their gimmicks failed

I am haze on the internecine language of market trading, is popping good or bad? Rising or falling?

Gotta love that last panel.

My son at Morgan Stanley said “Buy Facebook, opening at $40!” He was right.

“Boom Dot Bust” was a great Firesign Theatre album.

When my wife first got into the stock market, I clipped this panel from the newspaper; she kept it on her desk for years.

Most IPO trend up at the start and then drop when employees can start selling. Smart long-term investors usually wait 3 months before buying.

Amazon, at about $20/share in late 2000, hit ~$5 a few years later. Fast forward SLOWLY, and it hit about $100 in the later 90s, and dropped to maybe $50. It hit $100 again maybe 2009. In Market Adjusted for Splits $, that $20 is about $2, and today it is $127. Sometime the market rewards patience

We are all much calmer “on the way to the poor house”. Gambling is gambling. The odds are not in your favor.

I was left with $60,000 +/- invested after the first Dot Com bubble burst. Decided to double down on the tech sector and put it all on a NASDAQ Index fund and let it ride. It reached $600,000 +/- about 3 years ago when I decided to diversify. I got no complaints (except Long Term Capital Gains Taxes).

One guy who made a fortune in the stock market was asked what his secret was and replied “You’ve got to get out the day BEFORE the market crashes.”