Wall Street, it's a real place all right, located in the heart of lower Manhattan, but
over the years Wall Street has become a catch phrase for the financial markets in general.
So if you're looking to invest in stocks, bonds or other securities, the question is,
how can you get onto the street without getting run over?
Stay tuned to find out.
This is a special edition of Nightly Business Report, How Wall Street Works, NBR's updated
guide to investing in the financial markets, featuring Paul Kangas and the NBR team.
Hello, I'm Paul Kangas.
On Nightly Business Report, you may have heard me talk about the daily combat between the
bulls and bears of Wall Street, but as you can see here on the floor of the New York
Stock Exchange, there are no wild animals in sight, only thousands of very human traders
who are all here with one very human objective, to make money.
They do that by trading securities, the stocks and bonds issued by the world's major corporations.
And once you understand the language and some of the concepts used here in the financial
markets, there's no reason why you can't try your hand at investing in stocks and bonds
yourself.
Of course, the security markets aren't for everyone, since trading in them carries significant
risks and offers no guarantees.
But contrary to what many people think, Wall Street is not the world's biggest casino.
Unlike a casino, Wall Street serves a vital role in the American free enterprise system
because it makes it possible for companies to raise large amounts of money.
That's a process that is known as capital formation.
And by providing a place where individuals can cash in their securities on a daily basis,
these markets make it possible for you and me to participate.
To find out how the process of capital formation works and the role of Wall Street in it, let's
begin not in lower Manhattan, but thousands of miles away in the tropics.
Traveling is one pastime that's gaining in popularity, and Carnival claims to be the
most popular cruise line in the world.
To keep up with growing demand for its cruises, Carnival often needs new and larger ships,
and that takes money, a lot of money.
I think we felt that we had a vacation formula that was going to grow, and we were going
to need capital to grow it, and it's a capital-intensive business.
Buying new ships is not cheap, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars, each ship is 300 plus
millions of dollars.
So where does a cruise line go for financing?
In the past, Carnival went to Wall Street.
In 1987, the company sold stock to the public for the first time.
It held what's called an initial public offering, or IPO, selling 27 million shares of company
stock at about $15.50 each, and that raised nearly $400 million.
Investors of the public bought these shares and became part owners of the company.
As Carnival made money over the years, these stockholders shared in the company's profits
through payments that are called dividends, and through the appreciation in the company's
stock price.
However, the success of the company is not guaranteed, and because it's not a sure thing,
some investors prefer an investment that carries a stronger promise of payment.
So in 1990, Carnival chose a different route to raise cash.
It sold bonds.
Like a loan, a bond permits the company to borrow money from the buyer of the bond for
a fixed period of time.
In return, the bond owner is paid a fixed rate of interest until the company repays
the debt.
In Carnival's case, its original bonds were 15-year, 7.5 percent, zero-coupon convertible
bonds.
Now, here's what all that means.
Zero-coupon means that the interest is repaid at the end of the bond's holding period instead
of annually or semi-annually, like most other bonds.
And 15 years is the maximum length of time the company can hold that money.
Seven and a half percent is the yearly interest rate paid on that money.
And convertible means the owner of the bond has the option of converting it into a certain
amount of Carnival's common stock.
That can make the bonds worth more if the price of the company's stock shoots up.
Even if you managed to hold all of Carnival's bonds, you'd probably be rich, but you still
wouldn't be able to control the company.
To do that, you'd have to own a majority of Carnival's common stock.
And with over half a billion shares outstanding, you'd have to put in an awfully large buy
order to do that.
Jeff Yastein, Nightly Business Report, Miami.
Now, if you're interested in buying stock to take over a company, or for any other reason,
chances are you'll be making your deal through the stock market.
Now, behind me is the New York Stock Exchange, also known as the Big Board.
And it's the home to stocks of the largest companies called the Blue Chips.
There's also the American Exchange, located just around the corner, and the NASDAQ Stock
Market, a computerized system that brings buyers and sellers together.
And there are also several regional exchanges around the country.
Scott Gurvey takes a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into a single stock trade on
an exchange.
Once you have decided to buy or sell a stock, making the trade is not difficult.
You can still go down to your broker's office to enter your order, or simply give him or
her the order by telephone.
You can also enter the order yourself, using your home computer and a connection to the
Internet.
Whatever method you use, you can specify that the transaction be made at the current price,
called a market order, or you can place a specific limit on the price you will pay or
accept.
That's called a limit order.
The orders are now sent electronically to the floor of the stock exchange.
At the New York Stock Exchange, the order is carried by a floor broker to the trading
post, where the specialist who handles the particular stock is located.
A specialist presides over the auction market in the stocks to which he has been assigned
by the stock exchange.
He does the classic auctioneering things, calling out the bids and the offers, pointing out
the people who are making the best bids and offers, the same as you would see at Sotheby's
or Christie's on TV.
But in addition to that, the specialist is charged with being a catalyst, making trades
happen, introducing buyers to sellers.
Most of the time, the specialist is able to match up two brokers, one willing to buy and
another willing to sell.
Sometimes he buys or sells the stock himself.
Three for $21,000, $5,000 offer to four, you on $4,000, I'll guarantee it.
On the Nasdaq exchange, things work a little differently.
All Nasdaq transactions are done electronically, with market makers buying and selling stock
for customers over computer screens in their offices.
No moss, they just got an eight for $50.
While some big-name companies that got their start on the Nasdaq remain there, the market
specializes in helping small firms just starting out as public companies.
That's the whole capital raising and companies going public and maintaining an aftermarket
for these companies.
In my opinion, there's always going to be a place for that because an old thing I learned
way back in the beginning of the business when I started in 1972, a lot of these, we
used to call them over-the-counter stocks back then.
People don't buy over-the-counter stocks.
They're sold.
In other words, we make markets in a lot of very good companies that are not household
names.
However you entered the order and wherever the transaction was made, you can expect confirmation
to be sent back to you, confirming that so many shares were bought or sold and at what
exact price.
While you can't have a stock certificate sent to you for your shares for reasons of
convenience and security, most investors let their brokers hold their shares in their brokerage
account.
Scott Gervay, Nightly Business Report at the New York Stock Exchange.
Before you go out and start doing your own stock trades, it helps to know at least one
important piece of information, and that is the latest price of the stock you'd like to
buy or sell.
Thankfully, these days there are many ways to acquire that information.
Perhaps the quickest way to get a stock quote is to go to the Internet.
At several websites, all you have to do is enter the stock's name or symbol to get the
latest trading data.
If your stock is in the news or is actively traded, you may find it listed on that evening's
Nightly Business Report.
Here's an example.
It says that shares of the Home Depot last trade on the New York Stock Exchange at a
price of $32.68, up $2.43 from the close of the day before.
So if you want to buy one share of the Home Depot at the market price the next morning,
you should be prepared to pay a little under $33 per share plus the commission of the trade.
Newspaper stock tables are somewhat more complicated.
After you find the appropriate exchange, the stock's listing may look like this.
The first number on the left is the highest price the stock has traded at over the last
52 weeks.
The second is the lowest price in that same period.
After the company's name or abbreviation, the next number is the firm's annual dividend
expressed in dollars, in this case, 20 cents per share.
The following number translates that into a percentage yield in terms of the stock's
price.
Here it is just over six-tenths of one percent.
Then we have a number called the price earnings ratio, a widely used number that calculates
the stock's price relative to the firm's earnings.
It's one way to help determine whether a stock is a good buy, since the lower the P.E. or
the price earnings ratio, the better the presumed value of the stock.
As you can see here, the Home Depot's price earnings ratio, or P.E. on that day, was 22.
That is usually considered fairly high, but stocks that are Wall Street favorites can
carry even higher price earnings ratios.
Then we have a record of the stock's sales that day, in lots of 100 shares.
It shows that nearly 24 million shares of the Home Depot stock changed hands.
Finally, after all that background, we have the daily price range of the stock.
It shows that the Home Depot traded during the day at a high of $32.70 and went as low
as $30.80.
Then as the final column tells us, it ended the day near its high at $32.68, which translates
to a price $2.43 higher than the close of the day before.
All of this information is basically intended to help you answer two questions.
Is the Home Depot stock in your price range, and is it a good buy?
All of that information is intended to help you decide whether AT&T is in your price range
and whether it's a good buy.
But even if you've answered yes to both counts, there's another factor to consider before
you place an order, market timing.
You've probably heard the expression, a rising tide lifts all ships.
Well, the financial markets work in that fashion.
A bit of news or even a rumor about politics, the economy or interest rates can move an
entire market up or down, taking with it the prices of individual securities, commodities
or currencies.
And as Erica Miller reports, news can affect the markets almost instantly.
January 17, 1991, the United States bombs Iraq.
News of the successful US attack sends investors scrambling to buy stock, leading the stock
market to one of its biggest daily gains.
Longtime market watcher Bob Stovall says Wall Street looks at such events from a strictly
financial point of view.
War is frightful, but war does cause the governments to spend and puts people to work.
It eliminates unemployment.
It causes lots of money to be spent for hardware, software, research and development.
But it doesn't take news as momentous as war to move the market.
Walk on to any trading floor on Wall Street and you'll see traders watching the news
wires with one eye, their stocks with the other.
Bill Allen oversees trading for Jeffries & Company.
In years gone by, the investor or the trader who had the news first had the advantage.
Today, everybody's getting the news at the same time, so it's leveled the playing field
somewhat and it's made the markets much more volatile.
News has always driven the markets.
What's changed is the speed at which investors react.
The internet has a lot to do with this.
The pros, even small investors, have access to lots more information, as well as the power
to execute trades faster than ever before.
These days, a report on an economic indicator such as unemployment or a single corporate
earnings report can influence the mood of the entire market.
And it's not so much the earnings number that Wall Street reacts to, it's how it compares
to expectations.
You often hear the term bellwether stocks.
These are stocks that are so important in their line of business that what happens with
them affects all kinds of other companies and related lines of business.
The challenge for investors has always been to separate the noise from the news, but it's
even tougher today.
There's more information available and less time to analyze it.
Erica Miller, Nightly Business Report, New York.
Because stock prices tend to move together, the question investors generally ask is, how
is the market doing?
And the answer to that question often focuses on one number, the Dow Jones Industrial Average,
or the Dow as we call it for short.
Actually, the Dow is an index of the prices of 30 component stocks.
As you can see, the Dow currently includes some of the biggest names in corporate America,
and it has a long history.
I talked about that back in 1990 with the man known for many years as the keeper of
the Dow, the late Bill the Faith.
Just how did the Dow get started and what makes it such a key market barometer?
Well, over 100 years ago, a fellow by the name of Charles Dow and another guy, Edward
Jones, in July of 1884, they had some kind of a customer's letter they put out in the
afternoon.
And spasmodically, they would come with some kind of an index, and they kept refining it.
And by the time he got to 1896, they came with 12 industrials.
That's the first time they had an industrial average.
And here they are, American Cotton Oil, American Tobacco Still Around, it's called American
Brands, but not on the index.
The only one that's still there after all these years is General Electric.
And of course, there's some others there, National Lead, Tennessee Coal became part
of USX, and US rubber was in the index up until maybe 15, 20 years ago.
Alright, we've seen the originals way back when, and we've seen the current Dow 30.
But can 30 stocks really give us a general idea of what the economy is doing?
They can go a long way toward it.
At any given time, the total value of those 30 stocks in the Dow is something between
a quarter and a third of the total value of all the stocks in the New York Exchange.
So while there's only 30 of them, they're pretty big companies.
Okay, obviously, US businesses changed over the years, as have stock prices.
How does today's Dow compare to the original one, and how does it keep pace with the times?
Well, the original one was in 1896, the whole thing was worth 40.
It's been a big move, part of it is inflation, and part of it is in adjusting for all the
changes that keep changing the divisor.
And the divisor is now less than one, so it's no longer a divisor, it's a multiplier, hence
the volatility in the marketplace.
Well, now, besides the Dow, there are many other market indexes, and a lot of them, of
course, we display on the Nightly Business Report.
Now, taking a look at a typical day's roundup, what can you tell us about each one we see
here?
Well, the transports at one time were known as the rails, and you know, there was a theory
that if the industrials made the stuff and their stocks went up, then if the rails didn't
go up and they were shipping it, then it was not a true move.
So the transports, as they're now known because of so many airlines in there and truckers,
this is an important index.
The utilities also is important.
It's the latest Dow, and it started in 1929.
That is frequently a proxy for the direction of interest rates.
And, of course, the one last thing we see on this particular display is the closing
tick minus 178.
In this case, at a certain point in time, like the close on that particular day, that
means that 178 more stocks closed lower than their last previous price, then higher than
their last previous.
Just a trend indicator.
A very short-term indicator, though.
Here we go with the Standard and Poor's indexes.
Now, after the war, after World War II, the Standard and Poor's people came with one.
They took 500 industrials rather than 30 components.
They went to 500.
And it's 500 stocks.
Also you have the S&P 400, which is the industrial component within those 500.
And then, of course, there's the S&P 100, which is largely of interest to option traders
because there's a future that's based on that.
And, of course, the CRB is the Commodity Research Bureau.
That's an index, and it is very helpful in judging inflation.
Okay.
Let's have a look at some more averages.
Now, the New York Stock Exchange, they came along with one.
There's every common stock on the exchange, and it's something in the order of 1,300,
1,500 different stocks.
And strangely, the Dow and the S&P 500 and the New York Stock Exchange tend to track
each other pretty closely.
There's also the Amex.
They have the American Stock Exchange Market Value Index.
That's largely small oil companies.
There's the NASDAQ Composite, which is a good judge of the smaller companies.
Value Line, another smaller gauge.
NASDAQ stands for National Association of Security Dealers Quotation System.
Right.
And Value Line's right there.
And then, of course, the last one is the Wilshire 5000, which is not an index.
That's a total value in billions or sometimes trillions of what the marketplace is worth.
Okay.
Now, there are these so-called chartists who say that history repeats itself in a claim
that by studying the moves of various indexes, it's possible to foretell the course of the
market's future direction.
Do you think there's anything to that?
I think charts help, but you also have to look at the fundamentals.
If you're only going to look at charts, it's like driving your car by only looking in the
rear-view mirror.
In other words, what's happened is right.
That's right.
Okay.
Thanks very much, Bill LaFey.
Appreciate it.
The market indexes were originally intended for one purpose, to help gauge the overall
market's direction.
But as the market has become more volatile, they've taken on a new role.
Many investors now use futures and options on stock indexes to tie into the market's
ups and downs, as Diane Estabrook reports from Chicago.
Stock index futures have been around since 1982.
The most widely traded of them is the S&P 500 contract at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Investors on the Dow Jones Industrial Average are traded at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Professional investors like pension fund managers first use stock index futures as a kind of
insurance against damage that a move in the general market could do to the value of their
stock holdings.
Now many individual investors use them for the same purpose.
Others use them to speculate on the direction of the general market, because a relatively
small investment in an index future can pay off handsomely if the market takes a sharp
move in the right direction.
But futures contracts can be very risky.
Buyers and sellers of futures contracts must post a performance bond or a margin.
If they make a wrong bet on which way the index will move, they may have to pay more
than their original investment.
We have a system called mark-to-market, so losses or gains accumulate every day.
Losses have to be settled every day, so a loss can accumulate over time, so you will
actually owe your money, owe your clearing firm money for that loss in value.
Or in the other case, if you're on the right side of the market, money will accumulate
in your account every day.
Trading options on stocks or stock indexes is a somewhat less risky alternative.
That's because you can't lose more than the amount you pay for the option.
The basic difference between an options contract and a futures contract is an options contract
is a right.
It's not an obligation for performance.
A futures contract is an obligation.
You must perform.
Here's how options work.
A call option gives the investor the right to buy a stock or stock index at a given price
and time.
A put option gives the investor the right to sell at a given price and time.
If the S&P 500 is at $1,200 and an investor buys a call at $1,275, the investor could
buy the index at $1,275 and make money if it goes higher.
If the index goes down, the investor doesn't exercise the call and it expires worthless.
While there's limited risk to buyers of options, sellers take on some additional risk.
The seller of an option creates a potential obligation that can be much bigger given the
fact that the underlying stock or index could move.
So being a seller of an option without understanding the risk can be harmful and we caution people
to be aware of that.
Even the best stock pickers have a hard time beating the market indexes, so buying futures
and options on those indexes might seem like a good investment.
But because the underlying market is so volatile and unpredictable, industry experts warn against
putting too much of your portfolio into these instruments.
Dying as to Brooke Knightley Business Report, Chicago.
You may have heard talk about the markets being rigged against the small investor.
Like any place where a lot of money is at stake, Wall Street has its share of greedy
and unscrupulous individuals.
But as Stephanie Woods reports, there are rules which apply to everyone who does business
there and several agencies that work to enforce them.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is Wall Street's top cop.
It's on the lookout for securities fraud, which can take many different forms, including
attempts to manipulate stock prices, using advice that misleads investors, or trading
on information not available to the public, better known as insider trading.
The SEC's goal is to create a level playing field for all investors, and it works with
state regulators and the stock exchanges to bring that about.
The partnership of those three does a pretty good job of protecting America's investors.
But make no mistake about it, nobody can wipe out all fraud at one fell swoop, and America's
investors must use their own powers of understanding and reason to protect themselves.
To guard against illegal activities, the exchanges and the SEC monitor market activity, looking
for unexplained price moves.
The SEC also has the power to halt trading in a particular stock if it suspects that
illegal acts are taking place, or if investors have been kept in the dark about important
corporate developments.
We have tried in every way we possibly could to emphasize one of the most important aspects
of securities regulation, full disclosure, seeing to it that America's investors, in
terms of their prospectuses, in terms of public statements, in terms of what companies report
to them, disclose everything that is relevant to America's investors.
The SEC also has strict rules for stock brokers, which the agency calls broker dealers.
They are also tracked by the brokerage industry's own regulatory group, the National Association
of Securities Dealers.
We maintain records of brokers across the country.
The NASD is the primary regulator of the brokerage industry, so investors can call and find out
what the broker's history is and if there's a disciplinary history.
The phone number to get a broker's history from the NASD is 1-800-289-9999.
Regulators say to avoid fraud, you should deal with established brokerage operations
and deal only in registered stock or bond offerings, but if you believe you've been
misled or taken advantage of, you can file a complaint with a particular exchange and
the SEC.
Stephanie Woods, Nightly Business Report, Washington.
Now that we've explained the basics on how financial markets work, it's time to consider
your place in them and whether it's a good idea to invest your hard-earned savings there.
To discuss that, we have with us Theodore Miller, editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Magazine and author of several books on investing, including Kiplinger's Practical Guide to Your
Money.
Ted, welcome back to Nightly Business Report.
Ted Miller, Editor, Kiplinger's Personal Finance Report, Washington.
Glad to be here, Paul.
First, let me ask you, considering the risks that go along with stocks, why should individuals
consider going into the market and who should and shouldn't take the plunge?
Well, Paul, we think that for most individuals, the stock market represents the best hope
they have for acquiring measurable wealth in their lifetimes.
It's perfectly set up through stock accumulation plans or through mutual funds for you to be
able to put in a little bit of money at a time on a regular basis, and as the years
go by, take advantage of what's called dollar-cost averaging.
You accumulate stocks or you accumulate mutual funds that invest in stocks, and you look
back after five or 10 years and you can be surprised at how much you've got.
So obviously, there are good reasons to be in there, but when you're ready to start buying
stocks, shouldn't you have some kind of a strategy in mind?
You should.
In fact, when we look at the kinds of mistakes that people make when they go to invest in
the stock market, we discover that there are really eight common mistakes, and the very
first one is what you just named, and that is not having a plan or a philosophy.
This is really the mother of all investment mistakes because it leads to the rest.
If you don't have a plan, I don't mean a formal plan necessarily, but you should have
an idea of where you're going and how you're going to get there.
You should know that, well, I am investing because I need to pay for my retirement or
I need to pay for my children's college education in five years or 10 years or 15 or 20 years.
And if you know what you're doing it for, you know what your time horizon is, you know
what you can afford, you think about the kinds of risks that you're comfortable with, then
you will do something intelligent.
Second mistake is not taking the time or trouble to be informed.
Now, this is especially important and especially common these days when people go online and
they're likely to be pulled this way or that because somebody mentioned something.
We had a guy who we asked to do some day trading for us, and he followed some stocks just by
the way they were trading.
This is something that people can do now, and he discovered at the end of the day that
he had made several dollars in a company that manufactures a chicken carcass cleaning solvent.
He had no idea what he was investing in.
Ben Wattenberg Okay.
John Charles Daly That was a mistake.
Third mistake is not checking on the quality of the advice you're getting.
Again, this is something that is especially big these days, the day of online chat rooms
and the day of online bulletin boards where anybody can write anything and everybody sounds
equally authoritative.
So you need to check on where you get your information.
In the old days, if you called up your broker and you say, I want to invest in such and
such a stock, he or she would say, well, why do you want to do that?
And you'd at least have to back up where you got the information to get an assessment.
Today you're oftentimes on your own, so you need to be sure of that.
Ben Wattenberg Right on target.
John Charles Daly Fourth mistake is investing money that should
be set aside for another use.
By that, I mean there are really two ways to think of your investments.
One is in the long term and one is in the short term.
If you have short-term goals, it is something you know you're going to need the money for
within two or three years.
You know that tuition payment is coming.
You know you're going to buy that house.
You know you're going to take that big vacation.
That money should not be in the stock market.
That money belongs in the bank.
It belongs in a money market fund, belongs someplace safe where you know it's going to
be there when it's time for it.
Fifth mistake is a tendency people have to be optimistic at the top and pessimistic at
the bottom.
In fact, that's really just a way of saying that you think that things are going to continue
on the way they are and they're never going to get better or they're never going to get
worse.
Actually, this has worked pretty well in the last five or six years of the 1990s just because
it's been a good time for optimism, but it's not going to last forever.
You need to give some thought to things, and when times are bad, when things are down,
that's when you want to get optimistic as a long-term investor.
That's the time to buy things.
Okay.
Sixth mistake is buying on the basis of tips and rumors.
Again, in the computer age, we're all potential suckers for this sort of thing.
Things get on the web.
You hear things.
There's television and radio shows that go on all day long, and you hear something.
You might not understand it completely, but you go ahead and buy on that basis.
You should understand what you're doing.
Okay.
Seventh mistake, and we're all prone to this, and that is getting sentimental about a stock.
You say, well, you know, my dad left me these shares in his will, and they've been in the
family for 50 years, and I really can't bring myself to sell it even though this is a stock
that has been down for 10 years and shows very little promise of coming back up.
So don't get sentimental.
Buy all the kinds of tests to things that you would if you were buying it today.
The stock doesn't know that you love it.
It's unrequited love.
Is that it?
That's absolutely correct.
And finally, the eighth mistake, and it's one, again, that a lot of people have been
making recently, and that is the penny stock trap.
To think that because a stock is low-priced, that percentage gains will be greater.
If a stock costs a dollar, you think, well, if that stock costs only $2 in a few weeks,
that's only a dollar, and I'll double my money.
Well, stocks cost a little bit of money for a reason.
And although it is possible, and although everybody can find stories, which a stock
that started out at $1 is now at $100, there aren't too many of those stories.
So don't fall for it.
So the low price is there for a reason.
Right.
Okay.
And the reason is that's what the stock is worth.
Exactly.
That's very good advice, Ted.
And, you know, I think we should make it clear that you're talking about the market as a
place to invest for the long-term, not as a kind of a game that's played for quick and
easy gains.
Right.
There are two ways to look at the market.
One is as an investment, and that is the long-term view.
And by long-term, I mean at least 5 to 10 years.
The other is as a speculation, and that's what the day traders do.
The day traders don't care what they're buying.
They don't care what they're selling.
They're looking at patterns.
They want to get in first.
They want to get out first and make a little money here and there.
That's fine, but that's not investing.
That's speculating.
All right, now as any seasoned investor knows, it's one thing to buy a stock, but it's a
lot tougher in deciding when to sell.
How do you know when it's time to get out of a stock?
Well, you can never be sure, of course, but one thing you should look at is whether it
achieves what you think are reasonable price objectives.
If the stock has doubled or tripled, that's a good time to think about selling it, selling
part of it maybe if you think it has further to go.
Another thing to be aware of is whether some fundamentals have changed regarding the stock.
Maybe new management has come in.
Usually, if new management is coming in, things will happen to the price of that stock before
the new management gets into place, but you need to look for changes.
Has something changed with the company?
Has something changed with the industry?
And if that change has been for the worse, then that's a good time to sell.
Finally, Ted, is there any one piece of advice that you would give to a new investor?
What I would say to a new investor is that it is not important for you to sit down and
figure out the smartest approach to investing anybody ever came up with.
The important thing is to come up with an approach that you understand, that you are
happy with, and that you will stick with, and that includes making the decision now
to do it and setting things in motion so that you automatically put money into the market
on a regular basis when things are down as well as when the market is up.
Ted, I knew you when I got started in the market.
I'd probably be a lot better off.
I wish I did, too.
In any case, I want to thank you very much for being with us.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
Ted Miller, editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine.
Congratulations.
You now know the basics of how Wall Street works.
Of course, being knowledgeable isn't all you require to be a successful investor.
A little luck also helps.
But information is Wall Street's most precious commodity.
So stay informed by watching Nightly Business Report and by visiting our Internet website,
nbr.com.
This is Paul Kangus, wishing all of you the best of goodbyes as well as good sales on
Wall Street.