[DAB]

old story:

a young man's father passes away and in cleaning up the papers of dad, he discovers a stack of stock certificates. not knowing what they were or were worth, he takes them to a broker and asks "are these worth anything?" broker tells him that he'll have to look them up one at a time, could he come back next week? sure.

a week later, the young man returns to the broker, and upon entering his office, sees two stacks of his certificates. broker explains that one stack is worth nothing, those companies went broke, but the pretty certificates would make nice wall paper for a chicken coop. the other stack are successful companies, some worth tens of thousands of dollars, all together, the stack is worth several million dollars.

the man is astounded.

the broker explains that the dad had bought these over time when he was young, based on the dates on the certificates, and had just left them alone for many years.

the lesson: you will have some winners, and some losers, but if you are patient, and diversify, you'll probably do ok over time.

good luck.