FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for March 23, 2021

How do you know, Jason, stocks do not go down?

Nowadays, Jason would be hoarding shorted Gamestop shares.

Pets.com began operations in November 1998 and liquidated in November 2000. If this strip was written in the late 90’s, Jason might think that it is a good investment.

I learned that the hard way. I invested back in the dot com era. I made a nice profit the first day. I started with $300 in Yahoo. Over time, I was up to $4000 in Amazon when the bubble burst, and I sold at $2000 at my exe’s insistence. If I have kept it, I would be reasonably wealthy.

Remember how people use to say this before the bubble burst?

It is not that stocks go down, it’s that account balances plummet!

I knew stocks could go down. That’s why I invested all my inheritance in mutual funds. They can’t go down… Can they?

Investing on margin is one of the reasons people got in trouble during the Great Depression.

“…, and that’s why we want you to put your Social Security money there”, republicons.

Dad is digging himself deeper.

Is this before the dot-com bubble burst?

e-lynchity == a concatenation of e-trade, Peter Lynch (famous investor), and fidelity

In high school we actually ran a “stock market” simulation that let us buy on margin – where our project grade was based, in part of how much money we made from our starting point. “Margin call” was a harsh lesson for many – not me fortunately – but it helped me realize I didn’t have the guts to play in the market like that when I got older.

The assurance one hears right before every crash.

Jason was the original diamond-handed ape!

I REALLY miss the 90’s, part of that could be nostalgia since it was the decade I was a kid in, but it seems to be an objectively good part of our history…

Finally, another rerun I remember.

To really see the effects of market crashes, watch a PBS Antiques Road Show where they revisit a show from 2007 and state todays price next to the price back then. A whole lot of items dropped 50% from the original estimate. People had money to waste before the late 2007 crash.