Isn’t investing in the stock market these days’ just loads of fun?

The late, great American comedian Will Rogers must have thought so in his time.  He said, “Investing is easy.  All you have to do is buy low and sell high.”

Hey, that sounds simple enough.

But when is it low and when is it high?

We put our hard earned money in, thinking we are buying low, and then a series of silly world events scares everyone, they panic, dump their stocks, and take ours down with them.

That creates a new low, doesn’t it?

Which means we bought high, doesn’t it?  Oops!

This may be a little trickier than I thought.

Okay, so what world events triggered this panic?  Well, trifling stuff really, like a near meltdown of some nuclear reactors in Japan and us getting involved in our next war in Libya.

Ummm … correction on the Libya thing.  I meant to say the “Un-War in Libya.”  We try not to call these things wars, even though we are launching cruise missiles, flying our fighter jets, dropping bombs and blowing things up.

Which leads me to my next point which is, what’s so “Un-Normal” about this?

I mean, everyone knows it’s a Presidential requirement these days.  If you don’t start a war during your term in office, you just ain’t hip.  Plus you’ll have nothing exciting for your multi-million dollar Presidential Library.

Besides that – we’re behind schedule.  We only have military troops in 130 of the 180 countries in the world.  Oh, and a quick correction here – I misspoke about the multi-million dollar library thing.  I don’t think million is used in Washington anymore.  It’s gone the way of the Dodo bird, the mil, the penny and the farthing.  Everything is at least a billion — minimum.

So what’s the fuss?  Situation normal, I say.

Back to the Un-War thing, the current administration must have taken a great marketing cue from 7-Up on this one.  Some of you will remember the wildly successful ads they created in 1967 where 7-Up marketed themselves as the Un-Cola.  Sales soared — ummm, not that I’m saying people are trying to sell this war or anything.

But Un-Cola, Un-War, Un-Whatever, it made the stock market nervous and caused some folks to head for the investment hills (or is that Un-Valleys).

Of course, there still is that pesky nuclear reactor thing.  It’s so strange, really, that just a few weeks ago, nuclear power was becoming the darling of the world.  Even the ecology folks were bought in.  Uranium was greener than a Leprechaun’s butt.

So I took a financial newsletter recommendation to buy into some Canadian uranium stocks.  They were touted as dirt cheap.  That meant I was buying low, right?!

Then Japan, rather inconsiderately, had an earthquake and tsunami and tried to melt down their reactors.  So now uranium is the great Satan of investments and my stocks are down 30%.

Hmmm … so that’s the new low, isn’t it.  Damn – so I bought high again.  Oops!

I’m starting to feel like an ad I saw on the internet that read, “For Sale: John Deere Tractor: Runs good.  Missing seat and steering wheel.  Ideal for someone who has lost their ass and doesn’t know which way to turn.”

But you can’t keep a good man down for long.  Undaunted, I initiated some further research, because you just can’t believe everything you read on the “internets.”

And sure enough, our crack research team here at www.TheWoodChips.com revealed that Will Rogers was badly misquoted.  What he actually said was, “Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it.  If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”

See there!  That makes all the difference, doesn’t it.

I feel better already, don’t you?

Happy investing – J. Daniel

P.S.  Also, I’m taking a cue from Washington, because they know everything.  I’m going to start calling my investments Un-Investments.  Care to buy some uranium stocks – cheap?

P.P.S. You’ll enjoy some great Will Rogers quotes at this site http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Will_Rogers.

Also a nice write-up about him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_rogers.

And a 7-Up Time Line and History with the Uncola campaign at http://www.twoop.com/food/7up.html.