My Financial Tips

I received a call from John, the president of our online stock trading club. He wants to have an emergency meeting in the next day or two. He feels that he will find some comfort with the other members of the club.

I’m not so certain. I think he will find misery loving company.

Sarah, the vice president of the club, has agreed to the meeting, but wasn’t that excited about it. Her approach is more common sense. Sell positions that have no promise, sit on the cash, and wait. Also, cut your losses. Pretty basic, but it needed to be stated, and she did in an email.

I received a number of emails from members of the online stock trading group saying that they can’t deal with John’s excitability, and that they wish Sarah was the president. They felt she had more of what it takes to be an stock broker of sorts.

Perhaps next time, I replied.

We had our meeting. This time it was not for breakfast. We met at the local bar, had some pizza and beer, and [spin}shed a few tears|cried in our stocks[/spin].
Nobody wanted to go around and admit to the percentage of de-clines over the last few weeks, so we tabled that idea.

We then did some role playing about what we would do if we were the Federal Reserve Chief or the Treasury Secretary.

The results of our exercise were to hopefully determine if they did make the right decision in government jumping into the markets body and soul.

Some felt that it was the right move. Others said it wasn’t.

John, for his part, said it was the right thing to do. He is an expe-rienced trader. Sarah said she would have let the market fall on its face and get back up, just like a kid learning to ride a bicycle or a horse. The fear had to be cleared out, she said.

We all agreed to meet again on Saturday morning, just to have a review of the week’s events.