Dense Fog Advisory

How many of you are jumping back into the stock market? Did you already do so? What did you pick? Was it traditional stocks like GM and GE or did you go for broke and invest in alternative energy stocks? The opportunities right now are tremendous, like picking the ubiquitous low-hanging fruit. If you aren't raking in at least a few thousand dollars a day, then you're just playing around. Unless, of course, you're in it for the long haul. Either way, you shouldn't miss this moment. Once in a great recessional long while do investors get these free handouts in the form of cheap stocks to buy up and reap the benefits daily, or almost immediately, anyway.

From my first barter experience at age six, when I traded a watch my parents had given me in exchange for a rare matchbox race car another kid didn't know he had, I have desired to be the unobtrusive, sly millionaire next door. I realized early on that money has no value to me. It's just stuff. The stuff of dreams to some. But the stuff of ideas, too. Ideas that range from emptiness to rocket science. Hold a piece of paper money in your hand and ask yourself if it has any real value. You will undoubtedly say, "Yes, it does!", and dream of what it can buy you. But the fly that just landed on your paper money sees it simply as a stopping post, no different than your arm or a table. The fly can't eat the paper (unless you spilled jam on it first thing this morning) or exchange it for food at a restaurant.

I woke up this morning to a feeling of living in my own private world, the area around me surrounded in dense fog. Spider webs glistened in the landscape, dotted here and there among the vinca vine (both Vinca major and Vinca minor) spread across the front yard. Of course, to the spiders the fly has much more value than my dropping a piece of paper money in their midst.

We know the tired old phrase, money makes the world go around. I wonder...

I'm here because I've put others' desire for money to my personal gain. They use the idea of money to value company performance, which then demonstrates its value in virtual slices of the company called shares. Like infinite pieces of pie ready to be devoured when people are starving for dessert.

It would be wrong of me to bad-mouth that which puts food on my table. Of course, others play the game of satire to make fun of the world yet eat the food the world provides them. Hypocrisy is par for that game.

So is risk.

For those who've lost 20%, 30%, 40%, or even 50% of your investment portfolio value since 2007, what is your definition of risk? I'm sure it has changed. Mine sure has. I see risk as intrinsically important to my life. Risk in my portfolio? Well, that's what stock investing is all about. If you don't want to risk your money, don't have any. Money is itself a risk because it has no value except what two people agree it has.

Everything is barter, if you didn't know it.

I took a separate risk recently and accepted a part-time job with a for-profit corporation. The purpose of the corporation is to make money for stockholders. I haven't yet bought shares of the company's stock because I'm still evaluating whether the company's employees understand and demonstrate the core values of the corporation. If you asked me right now, my evaluation says that the employees are confused about the purpose of the company. Some of them don't understand the basic idea of the company's customer or that they're even working for a company. Their minds are blinded like a driver speeding through my neighborhood in the dense fog this morning, surely heading for disaster (or at least taking a high level of risk). It's as if they think they're working for a non-profit organization or a government agency. For many of them, that's all they've done before they started working for this company, so I've got to keep telling myself that they need some deprogramming time to get used to working for a profit-making group. Unfortunately for them, they've staked their livelihood on their misconception. My risk is only a loss of time, giving up an opportunity cost.

Well, at least I thought that was my only risk until last night. I won't go into detail about the new risk that one of the employees exposed me to but that employee is one of the ones who treats this venture more like a nonprofit or government job, where the risk of a lawsuit by a customer is low or impossible.

I am only a part-time employee of this company. A subcontractor, if you will. Following the advice of futurists, riding on the wave of modern employment practices. However, I sit here and ask myself if I should step in and assert my authority. Should I go up the management chain of this corporation and ask the higher-ups to develop a deprogramming program for employees like the one I referenced in the previous paragraph? I may. I don't know yet.

I don't mind the opportunity cost - it's a calculated risk I'm taking. However, if other employees continue their habits that clash with standard business practices of a for-profit corporation, then those others are taking risks for me that I didn't sign up for. Should disaster occur, I have no clear path to recovery like the one that this economy is providing my portfolio right now.

Bottom line: I like to buy the stock of companies with which I do business, whether as customer or employee. In this case, I'm not ready to recommend what should have been a no-brainer investment. More details as they develop.

Meanwhile, I'm still helping the small startup I stepped away from several weeks ago - the startup team wants my participation, if only part-time in this economy. I'm sticking with them because they may not understand all the details of running a business but at least they know the difference between significant personal and business risk-taking.