By Rosanne Hart “The Spexy Lady” | Monday October 17, 2011
If you’re investing in the stock market, you may not know this, but you can get paid to wait.
It took me some time to learn this because I would hardly be called a patient person. Somehow, Spexy Lady was doing something else—perhaps shoe shopping—and didn’t get the memo titled “Patience is a virtue.” But being the hard-headed redhead that she is, Spexy Lady has had to suck it up and BE PATIENT, lest she lose her entire Manolo Money Fund to the high-roller math mavericks on Wall Street.
And Math Mavericks they are! Here’s a little secret… 98 percent of the stock market is controlled not by discretionary decision-making, but by computers. Tech-wizards with genius IQs compute endless algorithms that make my head spin like that scary scene from “The Exorcist.”
What’s a Manolo Maven like moi to do when there seems no end in sight to the latest dizzying stock market gyrations? She does what any smart shopper would do. She shops the sales! And she never goes alone, since she might be inclined to buy something that doesn’t “fit,” costs too much, or simply just isn’t a good buy.
Spexy Lady’s shopping buddy is her very shrewd, very savvy financial advisor, who’s worth her weight in gold when it comes to investing and shopping Wall Street On Sale. It’s hard enough for the experts to navigate the shark-infested Wall Street waters these days, let alone trying to do it on your own!
- Spexy Lady’s first bit of wisdom: if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it. Simple enough.
- Spexy Lady’s second bit of wisdom: if you want to do something, get good advice – whether you call up those smart people at places like Fidelity, or Chuck at Schwab, or you sign on with a financial advisory firm that is fairly fee-based. And not before you’ve interviewed, in person, at least half a dozen firms, asked tough questions, and checked ‘em out as closely as you would a nanny for your precious babies.
- Spexy Lady’s third bit of wisdom: Take a few lessons from CNBC’s Mad Money expert, Jim Cramer. Buy America! What a thought! Consider purchasing stock in strong, healthy U.S.-based companies that pay dividends in the 3% and up range.
While your picks are riding the Wall Street Roller Coaster, they’ll be paying you to wait out the storm with a nice dividend check. And that’s the kind of waiting Spexy Lady likes — getting paid to wait. Be patient, don’t put all your eggs in one stock-basket, and ease in knowing it could well be a couple of years or more before the skies clear.
Parting thoughts: Keep some powder (not face powder) dry to snatch up some bargains, and pad that Manolo Fund for at least a year’s worth of income to insure you’ll never run out of Manolos.
For help on what to put on that stock shopping list, check out “Mad Money” daily at 5 p.m. Central Time on CNBC, or ask your advisor, for starters.
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A small-town Nebraska girl, Rosanne Hart graduated with a BS in Journalism from Kansas State University. At the age of 30, with a $1000 line of credit, she founded a national fashion/beauty PR/Ad agency, The Hart Agency, Inc., in Dallas. Despite her initial inability to balance a checkbook, and having flunked college accounting, she pulled it together and built The Hart Agency into a $1.5M agency, with offices in New York and Dallas, handling fashion clients and Fortune 500 accounts. An advocate for women-owned businesses, she is a founding member of The Texas Women’s Venture Fund, the Dallas Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, and mentor to young women.
Her two sons keep her humble. She writes a blog on money matters under her alter-ego Spexy Lady and says outrageous things on Twitter: @thespexylady.
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