by Christopher Alan Sweeney

Created on: July 16, 2009   Last Updated: July 20, 2009

Investment writing must be: real, personal and if possible humorous. Forget the theoretical, the jargon and the equations. People need to feel the subject and relate to it.

Most people don't even know what a stock is or have any idea what bonds are all about. Their idea of an investment goes no further than savings accounts, certificates of deposit or handing money over to a mutual fund with no idea what that mutual fund really is or does.

I've given many investment seminars and written many investment letters to my clients. I try to make people see what I'm talking about by telling stories.

There's one I've told so many times I can recite it almost verbatim. I tell them about the first time I bought a stock. I was a construction superintendent in charge of erecting the structural steel for a twenty-three story building in Brooklyn, NY. I was watching a welder attaching plates inside an elevator shaft. He was standing on a platform known as a float which meant it was hung from the surrounding steel not supported from below. He extinguished his torch and lifted his mask. We both lit cigarettes. He was my age - early twenties. He told me he was a college graduate too. I just said: "yeah" - so he would go on. He told me he was a stockbroker but the market had crashed again and his dad had taught him to weld and got him in the union but he was still a broker with some long forgotten firm. I said: "so is there anything good to buy in the market?"

"Oh, yeah! We're underwriting a company that's gonna build the soundproofing for the SST."

I didn't know what underwriting meant but I knew that the SST was the supersonic transport jet the US was going to build to compete with the British/French Concorde.

I said: "How much is it?"

He said: "A buck a share."

I said: "buy me two hundred."

The day after I paid for the stock the headline in the newspaper was: CONGRESS CANCELS SST!

Of course my stock went to zero and when the certificate arrived I stuffed it in one of those old green metal boxes we all had.

Years later I was looking for every last dollar I could find to close on a house. Of course I dug into the old box and pulled out some US savings bonds and then I spied the old certificate. I wondered if it was worth anything.

I took it to Bache & Co and the lady who was broker of the day looked at it strangely but went to a back room and returned about twenty minutes later. She explained: "The Company has reorganized and changed its name but it has done really well. It's worth seventeen dollars a share.

That was more than I needed for the closing. I said: "sell that sucker!"

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