Thursday, May 17, 2012

A bit of advice


Recently I had the opportunity of writing a piece for the Brainz Group, an on-line writers group that takes a topic and dissects each month. The topic for this month was “advice.” Good, bad or indifferent, we were to write about advice we had received, or heard or ignored.

I did my piece and put it to bed, as all good journalists would say. Then a thought struck me. What was the worst advice I ever gave out?

There was the time I told my gang in California, where were hard at work developing a website (this before any of us knew what a website truly was – say around 1994-95) that I thought the whole Internet thing was a fad and wasn’t going to work out. “Don’t put your money in this technology stuff, men. It’s just a passing fad.” Or the time I told a friend that the dot com run of stocks was about up. (It lasted two years past my prediction and many who didn’t listen to me made fabulous money by ignoring my short-term advice.) I sold Apple when I thought they were through. I bought it back when I knew they weren’t, then I told some friends that I thought Apple was the hottest stock around. They bought it and it immediately went down. (They do not talk with me any more.) I swore that Facebook was a momentary flicker on the social media horizon. (They will go public today for about a gazilliion dollars.)  I believed it would never last and that Amazon would never make money. I predicted Obama would pick Hillary as a Vice Presidential running mate. Who is this Joe Biden anyway? I told some friends that I thought the whole electric car thing was a fad and would go away. (That was in the 1980’s). And I told another friend, “How can real estate prices ever go down in California? They aren’t making any more land, you know.”

About the only thing I have predicted correctly was that I told my father on the eve of our invading Iraq, that we would not find a single weapon of mass destruction. I nailed that one.

But over all, I would say that if I give you a stock tip or make a prediction about a social phenomena, I would do the opposite of what I say. The numbers don’t lie. I have a horrible track record for predicting the future or reading the tealeaves, as it were.

By the way, I am sure Romney will be the next President of the United States.  Take it to the bank.



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