Hillary came back at the invitation of Sarah and John of our online stock trading group.  She was planning to talk on a number of things, including the Investors Bill of Rights.  Hillary had worked for a brokerage firm and had agreed to work to mentor our online stock trading club.

Our assignments were to really check out our brokerage firm and make sure that we could obtain information on the various components of the Investor Bill of Rights. Not much could be more important for online stock trading. 

The next meeting we had a lot of shifting of information to do. 

There were a couple in our group, including John, the president of our club, who found out that they has less than stellar information from their firms.  Sarah, the vice president of the club, had a much better profile of her company. 

My company was really good and followed all the suggestions of the Investor Bill of Rights. 

Hillary’s talk at our last meeting was about preserving the capital we needed to have to maintain our lifestyles.

She advised us that really no matter what we do in today’s market it is all speculative. Anybody who says they know for certain what the markets will do is being very foolish. We are in uncharted waters, she said, as far as investing goes.  When the central bankers, wall street wizards and United States Treasury cannot even figure out what’s happening, the likely hood that the small individual investor will call it right is not great.

What was that ancient Chinese saying?  May you live in interesting times?  That was not meant as a positive, Hillary said.  She left with a warning to be careful in any investing today, as the rules seem to be changing daily.

When Hillary left you could have heard a pin drop around our table. We knew there was value in the market; we just had to be sure that we could determine it.