Dow 20,000 from Dow 2000

Money, money, money.  In college I studied Literature, and Business seemed so irrelevant.  Then  I went to law school, and realized pretty soon I didn't particularly like being a lawyer.  But, I reasoned, if I could make a good amount of money doing it, I could at least tolerate it.  And I turned out to be one lucky SOB in that arena.

Yesterday I was talking to Pat, one of 4!! financial planners Wifey and I use.  We're not that rich, but over the years we've opened accounts at different places, and somehow ended up with Pat, in a small brokerage, Victoria, from Merrill Lynch, Oui, from Morgan Stanley, and Natalia, from Chase.

Of the four, the only one whose advice I truly trust is Pat's.  The others, though nice enough, and once in awhile providing perks, seem to only be salespeople who follow whatever their large companies tell them to sell.  Pat, on the other hand, takes the time to really study and analyze investments.  He has performed much better, by far.

Of course, luck plays into it, too.  17 years ago, Pat urged me to invest about $20K in a company then on hard times, called Apple. That turned out pretty well...

Over time, when I overcome inertia, I'll phase out the others, and simply open accounts with discount brokers.  I have one with Merrill already, and it seems folly to pay thousands of dollars in commissions when we buy or sell stocks versus the $5 trades Merrill Edge provides.

So Pat called yesterday, to discuss the fact that the Dow was nearing 20,000.  He doesn't put much into so called market milestones like that, but it got us to do some investment reminiscing.  He asked me when I first invested in the market.  It took me back...

It was 1987.  Wifey and I owned our first house, thanks to a gift of $10K my mother made to each of us three kids.  We took $8650 of that money, and used it as the 10% down payment on our first place -- a 1500 square foot Kendall house on a 1/3 acre lot that looked enormous because of the tiny house size.  We loved that place -- it looked like it was in our beloved Coconut Grove, with an enormous banyan tree out front.  We lived there happily with our pre-kids -- dogs we treated like our children -- Midnight the Lab, and Alfred the Cocker Spaniel.

Wifey already had money saved -- about 6,000, and with my Mom's fist, I had $2000.  Wifey had a co worker named Kathy, and her husband Ronnie was a broker with Drexel Burnham.  He convinced us to open our first brokerage accounts, and we did -- IRAs, and a small non retirement account.  It was, I think, August of 1987.

I asked Pat what the Dow was then -- he said about 2000 -- a tenth of today's size.  In October, Wifey and I took a trip to D.C. to see her friend Dolly, and tour the capital.  On Monday, we visited Congress.  Congressmen were running around -- many leaving the floor to make calls.  Were we at war, I wondered.  No -- it was Black Monday -- the day the stock market crashed.

We returned from Miami, and got a call from Ronnie -- don't panic, he said, even though your statements will show you lost half your money!  Caramba!  Is this what happens -- you put in your life savings, and lose a big chunk of it?

We stayed the course, of course, and over not too long recouped our money.

Alas,  Drexel went out of business, and the marriage of Ronnie and Kathy likewise failed.  Wifey and I are still a going concern...

So I mark the time -- 30 years since we started investing, and our 30 year wedding anniversary is coming up soon, too.

I've tried repeatedly over the years to get Wifey to learn about investing -- taking her to seminars given by the bankers, showing her statements on the computer...but she has no real interest.  My Mom was exactly the same -- my Dad would tell her the money situation was fine, and that was all she needed to hear.  I guess many of us DO marry our mothers, after all...

So the Dow may hit 20,000 today, or maybe not.  If new president Trump and his completely GOP congress do what they say, the market may well continue to soar -- making us richer and richer, on paper...

Tonight I have a meeting with some very close friends, to discuss a private investment -- a biopharmacology company geared to hopefully find a cure for nasty sickness in children.  My first interest is to help in the research, but there's a component that the company might well make a lot of money.  That'd be grand, of course, though I'll probably keep driving the little girlie Caddy.  Nah -- if this thing hits really big -- maybe I'll move up to the slightly larger model.

All I know for sure is that time keeps flowing, like Alan Parsons Project tells us...a river, to the sea.  It'll be interesting to mark it with where the Dow is years from now...

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