The Dow Is Up!

I've really turned into quite a slacker over the last few days. It's the last week of my winter break. I've been putzing around the house a lot, trying to get over a cold. I'm hoping to get into a more steady routine next week when school begins. I'm hopeless without a schedule.

The good news, though, is that it seems like I can finally answer the question "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I want to retire, that's what. And I think I found a way to do that. I got an email from a professor at school indicating that she's going to have a class on portfolio management this semester. I'm going to take the class, and that'll be what I do when I grow up. (At least for the next couple of years.)

What is portfolio management? Well, there are people with money. You may know some of them. They have this money that they want to invest, but they don't know how to invest it. Should they buy GE? Should they buy Microsoft? Who can tell? I can tell. (Or I'll be able to in a few months.)

Portfolio managers basically buy a bunch of stocks and bonds and put them all in one "portfolio." Then investors can buy the portfolio and not have to worry about buying any individual stock. Instead, they have to figure out which portfolio to buy. And by last count, there was over 100 billion of them.

The great thing about being a portfolio manager is that you don't have to be good at your job. It's all about being lucky. In the history of portfolio management, there have been only 2 analysts who can consistently beat the market: Warren Buffet and Peter Lynch. Everyone else is just a retarded monkey throwing darts. Which is how I plan to pick my stocks, by the way. Now if that isn't a ringing endorsement to (a) hire me and (b) invest in my portfolio, I don't know what is.