Going to orphanages, or the home for the aged, or seeking out the poor and the downtrodden – to reach out, to help – it is not something one thinks about on a day to day basis. But they – the abandoned, the old and forgotten, the poor, the downtrodden – their existence is [...]

One year. That was how long my relationship with the stock market has been. But there was a pre-story, which was training, lots of training, before I found the heart to jump in and play for real.

Flashback to 2008, giddy and excited and with fake money at hand, I started with the online stock exchange (it offered a practice account). Prepped by my financial planner, pumped up with some reading I had done here and there and some monitoring of the market, I found I gained some fake USD$600 in a few months. But I since I was in no real danger of getting poor or rich, I soon found myself bored. The market bottomed out too, wiping my gains, but ironically, it was also the perfect time to get in for real, to play for real.

But some important lessons were learned. One, do not go into business that you do not understand (selling). Two, do not leave the selling to other people and think you can just sit there, oceans away, and make lots and lots of money. Sometimes it works, most of the time it does not. Three, do your due diligence. Find out about the business, does it sell, can you get the goods for less (I did not really haggle that time), how long before you make the first installment, can you get a discount for bulk, are there existing flyers to help you promote the business, how many months before you get the ROI (return on investment), what is the possibility that it would fail and is it surmountable. Four, have a marketing plan – launch, joining trade fairs, email marketing, providing incentives or discounts, testimonials, product review – that would span months, or years.

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I remember Mr. S now, and Warren Buffett, both of whom are probably besotted by the plagues of the stock market because of the crash of the world economies in October 2008. But I remind myself it is a bear market once again, the kind that Mr. Buffett, and Mr. S, his follower, wait for and thrive in. I wonder how they are.

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