On the street

I have a few loves in my life. One of them is roller coasters.

After all, what’s not to love about being strapped in the front car of a coaster by an indifferent, minimum-wage earning attendant, whiplashed up a 10-story hill by a rickety chain, then hurtling downhill at a face-flattening 75 degree angle with the ground coming at you at 65 mph.

I know, right?

Another one is Las Vegas. I love that town because everything you've ever heard about it, good or bad, is true. Name one other place like that. I already hear you tsk tsk-ing. But you know what your problem is? You’re just not focused on the right things.

Color me romantic, but I can’t get enough of daylight depravation, cigarette smoke permeating my clothing from walking through the casino, cocktail waitresses serving watered down mixed drinks 24/7, the feel of dice in my hands, crap table bets I know nothing about but make anyway, parents with 8 month-old babies slung over their shoulders walking through the casino at 3 in the morning, a one-third scale Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower right there in the desert where they belong, the intoxicating smell of desperation and bankruptcy.

The real question is what’s not to love?

So when my friend Janice (more about her in a minute) presented me with the idea of participating in the perfect mix of both those worlds – the stock market – I jumped on it.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

It’s not like I haven’t dabbled in the market before. Years ago, a month before Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, my friend Ned told me to buy Columbia Pictures stock. I did. The movie came out, made a ton of money and the stock took off faster than the mother ship. I held on to it for about two weeks then sold it for a tidy return on my investment.

I remember thinking, “I could get used to this."

My next dive into the investment pool was off a recommendation from my Taco Bell client at the time, Bob McKay. Bob started Taco Bell with Glenn Bell, and as you might imagine, had more money than God. Two things were true about Bob: he was an architect who actually designed the original mission-style Taco Bell restaurants, and became a multi-millionaire selling cheap tacos and burritos to the masses. And, he became a gazillionaire when Pepsi bought Taco Bell. Overnight he was one of the biggest Pepsi stockholders in history.

He seemed to be doing well. Why wouldn't I take a stock tip from him.

The tip was a company called Birdview Satellites. Seems they had this futuristic idea of satellites broadcasting television signals down to 18-inch satellite dishes they’d build and sell. You’d be able to mount these dishes on the patio, the roof, the backyard, wherever. Bob made a convincing case, and the idea sounded good to me. I bought a hundred shares at $20 each (I’ll save you the trouble - $2000).

It turned out as good as their idea was, it was just too ahead of its time. People - and by people I mean banks, investors, networks and the general public - thought getting crystal clear TV signals from space on small, inexpensive satellite dishes was just crazy talk. One telltale sign it was going south was when I got the statement from Paine Webber listing the stock value as “worthless.”

I remember thinking, "who needs this?"

About seven or eight years ago, I bought some shares of Apple at $52. The very next day, Apple had a press conference saying they’d overestimated earnings, and the stock value was sliced in half to $26. Yeah, I was feeling pretty street savvy right about then. The decision was whether to cut my losses or hang on to the Apple stock. I hung on to it figuring at the very least IBM would buy Apple and buy back the stock for something closer to what I paid for it.

Needless to say, I’m glad iHung on to it.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was iChatting with my aforementioned friend Janice, an awesome author, blogger and artist in her own right. As I discovered, I need to add “investor” to the list. Come to find out Janice is an E-Trade preferred customer. She’s online every day checking the stocks, buying and selling, and, as we like to say, building the empire.

I hadn’t thought about stocks in a long time, but after a little convincing from her about how much fun and rewarding buying and selling online was, it was all I was thinking about.

Today I logged into my dormant Schwab account and saw I had around 4 large sitting in a cash account. So I bought 10 shares of one stock, and 12 of another. Not many, but they were expensive shares.

I’d like to think otherwise, but I know Monday I’ll be online first thing seeing how the stocks are doing. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. You see where I’m going here. It may already be too late, but I really am going to try not to become too obsessed with it.

There are two things I know for sure. First, since I'm back in the market I'll probably be too nervous to see the sequel to Wall Street anytime soon.

And second, if these stocks tank, I’ll be having another chat with Janice.