Some of you have been wondering where I've been. I'm going to come clean. Here it is: I've been goofing off mostly. I thought I could goof off and keep up with you guys with some Santa helpers but the goofing off turned out to be quite a lot more time consuming than I expected and my helpers, as great as they are, aren't me.
Goofing off got the better of me. It involved a lot of horseback riding in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, around the Southeast, Spain and Africa. It also involved getting married to Melissa.
We love horses and Melissa is a truly accomplished rider and 3-Day Eventer (an Olympic sport that tests who is the best all-around rider and horse team in the world). For our honeymoon we took a safari on horseback across the Masai reservation in Kenya all the way down to the Tanzanian border with Offbeat Safaris. Our trip organizer was Lucinda Green, one of the greatest Eventers to ever ride and a good friend. And we threw in a week on a Spanish rancho north of Seville with the Garcia family to learn Dressage on Andalusian horses. And a week up in Kalispell at the beautifull 'Rebecca Farm' to compete in her wonderful 3-Day Event.
And a lot of time just sitting around thinking, "Damn, life is good." There are worse things to be doing.
But eventually the urge to invest (and write about it) became overwhelming so I'm back and starting to blog it up again.
There is a lot to write about in the investing world. What I like to do is to see what others are proposing ("The 10 BEST stocks of 2011") and then poke holes in every one of their ideas. I'm not being mean. I'm being scientific. You have a hypothesis that the world is flat then you go out and see if you can sail around it. If you can, your hypothesis is wrong.
I'm going to be poking a lot here. Its fun for me and might even, once in a while, be profitable if I find something on the 'list' that is actually on sale.
And if you guys want to pile in with comments, go for it. I promise I'll do my best to answer questions. I won't get to all of them if y'all get busy, but I'll try to answer the best ones.
And don't forget as you get deeper into actually investing on your own, you gotta make sure you can still tell the forest from the trees. Most people on Wall Street can't any more.
If you want to have money when you're old, then investing is critical. No one can do it for you that you can trust unless you're really loaded and even then ... need I say 'Madoff'? But one of your biggest assets is that you are NOT on Wall Street. You can see the forest for the trees. Make sure you keep that advantage by not getting so caught up in investing that you forget to live your life. Raise your kids, love on your spouse, smell the flowers.
I'll be here for you when you want to dig in on making some money.
Now go play.
Phil
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