Apple? What Apple?


This evening as I was driving home listening to the news a segment called the "Evening market report" came on. This features a woman from a local brokerage calling in a recording of how the market went during the day. It covers the indexes and any significant action on big ticket items. As usual, I basically tuned this segment out. I have only a passing interest in how the market fares, since the closest I come to playing the market is deciding to put 30% of my retirement money into OPERSs "aggressive" portfolio (Oooo. Life on the edge, I know).

As she rattled off her list of events, she happened to mention that Apple's stock is up. No suprise there, right? The only odd thing was that she introduced it as "Apple, maker of the Ipod music player."

My first reaction to this was "anyone who doesn't know that Apple makes Ipods has been living in a shepherd's shack on the South Island of New Zealand for the last three years."

But then something a little more disturbing dawned on me. Presumably, the only people who would care about what this woman has to say are investors. If an investor has decided to buy stock in a company, presumably s/he has researched the company at least minimally in order to decide if it's a good investment. If a person who has sunk money into Apple stock doesn't know that they make Ipods, why did they invest in Apple?

It all put me in mind of the story about Joe Kennedy in 1928. Legend has it that Joe sold out all his stock in 1928 after his shoeshine boy started giving him stock tips. He figured that if novices like the shoeshine boy were in the market, it was probably overloaded and ready to collapse.

Seriously folks, before you spend your money on something, at least do us all the favor of figuring out what you're doing? That's all I'm saying.

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