Thursday, January 27, 2011

A Silly Stock Story

Years ago, I told my dad that I wanted to buy some automobile stock. (This was back when General Motors was going full gun, and the auto industry was looking pretty good.) He suggested Ford -- it was lower-priced than GM and Chevy, and he said he'd never had trouble with Ford vehicles.
     So I did -- at $14 and change a share.
    Time went by. Dad had fun talking about my great wisdom in stock-picking, especially as the Ford stock prices went down. And down. And down.  It finally plateaued around $4. GM, in the meantime, was going up steadily.
     Then came the Great Recession debacle. GM took federal funds -- and tanked anyways. (If I'd bought GM stock, those shares would be worthless today.)  Ford refused to take federal money...we cheered! Gradually the company recovered, and the price of its stock started to rise. I bought more...sold some to take a profit...bought more. Not only that, but I collected dividends every quarter. Not much, but something.
     Yesterday, the stock was at $17.76. I've been feeling that we're going into a correction soon, and planning to sell off some chunks of stock. The Ford stock said, 'I should go.' In a click it was done -- I'd gotten some profit on all of it, and a healthy jump on some of it.
     This afternoon, Ford (F) closed at $18.85!
     I can feel Dad laughing.

Saturday Update: I was right to follow my instincts!! Ford declared a smaller than usual profit for this quarter. By day's end Friday, the stock price was down to $16.27. Nanny nanny boo boo.

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