Fail Safe Investing Series

The Intelligent Investor…

That last book, I pulled off the shelf, grabbed a chair and sat down… I - flipped through a few of it’s pages… There was a section in the beginning called; “The Sure Thing That Wasn’t.” AND – I thought, “awesome… maybe I could use this in my sermon…” It talked about investments that looked safe, but turned out to be disasters… YOU SEE – no only can you make a lot of money by investing – you can also loose a lot…

ONE – example of a sure thing that wasn’t was called, Monument Internet Fund… it had a 117.3 % return in it’s first 5 months (in just 5 months your money would more than double ( 5,000 would be $11,000). The fund manager predicted that the fund would gain 50% a year over the next 3 years… AND – would have an annual average of 35% over the next 20 years…. ($ 10,000 – 4 million)… BUT – things didn’t quite work out as he predicted… IN FACT - 10,000 invested in May of 1999, was only worth $2,000 by the end of 2002.

ANOTHER – sure thing that wasn’t… was a fund called Amerindo Technology…It grew an incredible 248.9% in 1999. (a $ 5,000 investment would be worth almost $ 18,000 in just 1 year). The fund manager said that this growth would continue and that if investors didn’t like 10fold growth they could go somewhere else. BUT – again things did not go as predicted. INSTEAD – a 10,000 investment in Dec 1999 by 2002 was worth only 1,195 (an 836% decrease). The book said that it was one of the worst destructions of wealth in the history of mutual funds…

YES – not all investments are safe… In 1929 millions of Americans found that out… AS – the stock market crashed and the Great Depression was born… AND – recently millions once again found out that their investments were not as safe as they thought… WHEN - from March of 2000 to October 2002 the stock market lost 50% of it’s value or 7.4 trillion dollars… I have a hunch that some in here felt the sting of that lose on their 401k’s and other investments…

NO – despite what brokers, financial advisors, Clark Howard and other Wall Street wonders tell us… Despite the fact the same dude named Harry Browne wrote a book called, ‘Fail-Safe Investing, Lifelong Financial Security in 30 minutes…’ there is only one fail-safe investments… AND – it has nothing to do with building worldly wealth. OKAY – the first point in your notes is;

Two Investors

Luke 12 - The Fool

AGAIN – in Luke 12 we meet our first investor… AND – this guy when it came to building worldly wealth was awesome…. I MEAN - he made all the right investments; everyone stock he picked was a winner – ever risk he took paid big dividends.. HE - just kept getting richer and richer… HE - had more money then he could spend in a 100 lifetimes… What a great investor… AND – if he were alive today… I would have found his book; “My Barns Are Overflowing And So Can Yours, How to Eat, Drink & Be Merry In just 30 minutes) on the shelf at Barnes & Nobles.

AND – then Jesus tells us that this man dies…

NOW – I want to pick up his story from there… BUT – with a 21st Century flavor…