Many people invest in the stock market hoping to find the next Microsoft and Dell. However, I know from personal experience how difficult this really is. For more than a year, I was 1 hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars a day investing in the market. It seemed so easy, I dreamed of 2 my job at the end of the year, of buying a small apartment in Paris, of traveling around the world. But these dreams came to a sudden and dramatic end when a stock I 3 , Texas cellular pone wholesaler, fell by more than 75 percent 4 a one year period. On the worst day, it plunged by more than $15 a share. There was a rumor the company was exaggerating sales figures. That was when I learned how quickly Wall Street punishes companies that misrepresent the 5
In a panic, I sold all my stock in the company, paying off margin debt with cash advances from my credit card. Because I owned so many shares, I 6 a small fortune, half of it from money I borrowed from the brokerage company. One month, I am a winner, the next, a loser. This one big loss was my first lesson in the market.
My father was a stockbroker, as was my grandfather 7 him.(In fact, he founded one of Chicago’s earliest brokerage firms.) But like so many things in life, we don’t learn anything until we experience it for ourselves. The only way to really understand the inner 8 of the stock market is to invest your own hard-earned money. When all your stocks are doing 9 and you feel like a winner, you learn very little. It’s when all your stocks are losing and everyone is questioning your stock-picking 10 that you find out if you have what it takes to invest in the market.