From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2000 - 20:24:57 MST
> Stirling Westrup wrote: but [today's very young] are
> unfortunate in that it takes a mature and introspective mind to answer these
> questions well, and there is little guidance available from the adults around
> them that are still imurred in the 'survival' mind set.
Roger that. Im still in that mindset, tho my circs do not really
require it. Its like I am hardwired to work, save, work, save.
Americans over 70 have a well-known hoarding instinct, thought
to have been caused by their 1930s era great depression
experiences. With my grandmother, if you gave her a set
of expensive towels, for instance, she would never use them,
she would save them back, using the old threadbare ones until
they were tattered rags. Depression mentality.
I have a recession mentality: my parents and grandparents
worked at Cape Canaveral during the downturn of 1969,
right after the first Apollo launch and before the shuttle.
Many lost jobs, many lost their homes, Titusville FL was a
ghost town for several years. Now I share many of the
characteristics of depression mentality, just less of it.
Knowing what I now know, dynaminc optimism and all
that, I *still* cannot bring myself to invest in the well-known
high flyers, the few stocks that have been making fortunes:
microsloth, aol, you know them.
Take Amazon.com for instance. Please. Take them. Away.
There is a company which I neeeever would have guessed would
be worth the jillions people have been paying. Annnnybody
can set up a bookseller online, whats special about Amazon?
Single click to order? Who is to say they wont become the
poster child for silly patents, and lose clientele to other firms
that require two or more clicks, just as a protest?
Yet my stance on Amazon has been wrong, so far. So now
pretty much anything I tell the very young is under suspicion.
So, that gray veil over the future is already in place for me.
I cant see what is coming.
One more please. Heres one you will rarely hear: a person
discussing a huge stock loss they had. Anybody will tell you
their successes, but here is a collossal loss: I was heavily invested
in a big bricks and mortar company, Lock.heed.Mar.tin. I knew
the products, I worked there, seemed like a good bet, but in
fact it was a terrible bet for reasons I never could have foreseen.
The stock was at 56 a year ago last June, now its 17 1/2, and
I suspect we havent hit bottom. It has nothing to do with the
market for communications satellites, which is good. This
company cannot recruit and hold young people. I turn 40
this year and I am *still* in the lowest quartile in age there.
Consequently our average salary is way up which drives
profits down. And theres more to it than that, but I ramble
excessively today. spike
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