Sunday, March 09, 2014

Market Wisdom From Naomi Ruth Katz

This guest post is from Naomi Ruth Katz, who has experienced more markets than I could possibly study.  It's an honor to share her wisdom; she is normally quite private.

When Brett asked me to write for his blog, I wondered, "What's this blog?  It sounds like something that comes out of your nose."  But Brett explained that blogs are a way of publishing without writing things on paper.  In my day, when you wanted to write, you took out a pen and paper and put the letter in an envelope and mailed it.  Now they have blogs.  Go and figure.

So what can I tell you about trading?  The best trade I made was giving up my first husband.  What a putz!  For years I thought about ways of getting rid of him like that Hitchcock episode where the woman kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and serves it to the detectives.  But you have to let those things go.  You learn from your losses and you move on.  Like I tell my son, the one with the tuches punim: why always so farbissen?

But trading markets is different than getting rid of a cheating piece of dreck.  You should keep it simple, otherwise you'll give yourself an ulcer.  When you go to the store, do you shop for the most expensive things?  Of course not.  You look for a bargain.  It's that way with stocks.  You don't buy them when everyone wants them and the price is high.  You wait for everyone to hate them, because that's when they go in the bargain bin.  I love the bargain bin, like the one at the dollar store.  I get things for 50 cents at the Flatbush outlet all the time, including a nice shampoo that doesn't make my hair frizz.

Listen to me, you'll never make money trading with a goyishe kop.  Never pay the retail price for anything.  And make sure you return your library books on time, or they make you pay a fine.

One other thing, live a little.  There are too many people like Brett getting up at 4 in the morning just to hock a chaynik about changing markets.  Forget markets, worry about changing your oil.  You can drive yourself farmisht with all these statistics.  Hold onto your money, find good bargains, and take a vacation every so often.  Only it shouldn't always be in the same place. 

NRK