Is the patient out of intensive care?

Is it possible that the signs of recovery are real?

It could be that while we were busy squandering wealth on all sorts of luxuries we didn’t need and on defense systems that we will never use and borrowing too much money, we actually unknowingly created a super strong economy with a built-in antivirus?

The last couple of weeks

Look at the stock exchange figures for the past couple of weeks – a recovery is under way. Perhaps I’m being naïve because I don’t really understand what’s going on but my own little portfolio is showing signs of getting out of bed.

A couple of years ago I took a Payday Loan and went on a trip to Canada. There I visited an old friend. His wife was very ill and he would not leave her side. I asked him how he passed the time stuck at home 24/7 and he said that he played the stock market. He led me into his study which consisted of a long desk and a row of computer screens all flashing with activity.

His profitable pastime

He sat in a chair with castors and zoomed up and down along the screens buying and selling shares. I asked where he got his information from and he gave me the name of one of the share advisory services. He said that they were very accurate and that he followed their advice as long as his budget permitted. I guess then that he was playing with hundreds of thousands of dollars. “I’m doing excellently, thanks. These advisors are great and the exchange keeps going up and everything’s fine. Except my poor wife, who dies a little every day.”

I try it.

I came home enthusiastic at the prospect of making some money. I joined his share advisory service, signed up with a broker, opened an account and started trading, following advice that rolled in every day from the service. My total portfolio was $6,000 and I promised myself that I would not put another penny into it. I have to say that it worked well. It wasn’t as dramatic as I had thought but it was a steady climb to $7,000 in the space of 12 months. Not bad, right?

Melt-down

Then came the melt-down. Because I didn’t understand sub-prime mortgages and didn’t heed the warnings and because my share advisory service kept telling me what to buy and what to sell, I sat and watched my $7,000 dwindle day by day until it hit about $2,500. I felt sick, stopped watching it and wrote it off as an expensive lesson. One day I saw that shares in the Ford Auto company were down to just $1.50. I bought a hundred with cash in the account and sold them at $2.50 and made a $100. They dropped again and I repeated the procedure making another $100. Doing this with a couple of cheap shares I got my portfolio up to $3,000.

My annual subscription to the share advisory service ran out and I never renewed it and amazingly enough they didn’t even pester me. I guess they understood that their system doesn’t work on a falling market. I got rid of some of their recommendations and bought according to whispers on the internet.

Recovery?

Last night my portfolio stood at $5,300 and I am excited. This just shows how conditioned we can become to present conditions. I have to continually remind myself that I am losing the money-making war even though I win a daily battle here and there.