I figured it’s time I did more than wonder exactly what the Dow Jones Industrial Average is all about. I’ve had a stock portfolio (tongue in cheek) since about 2001 and to this moment I couldn’t tell you what it means when they say the Dow is down or up x points or y percent. So I finally got around to doing some research a moment ago, and I came across a newsday.com article titled “Understanding the Dow Jones Industrial Average“.

I won’t pretend it’s all suddenly clear now that I’ve read the article, but at least I’ve taken a first step towards understanding the “Dow Jones”, and I’ve come away with bits of knowledge I did not possess before.
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I am still trying to make a decision about picking up 100 shares of Sirius XM radio Inc stock now that the price per share is under $0.50 cents. My problem is, I haven’t seen anything good happening with Sirius stock value since I purchased 20 shares of their stock a few years ago. I came across a discussion from 2004 where someone was predicting that the company stock would be doing well in a few short years. We’re about to head into 2009. It’s doing worse than when I first purchased my 20 shares. I realize the current financial crisis has something to do with the stock value dropping to such an embarrassing low; but Sirius stock has been looking pretty ugly for a while.

I guess the question I should be asking myself is “What is the future of satellite radio?”; and I should probably give some thought to what Paul Carroll, former editor and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, had to say in answer to that question:
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Were you really worried anyway? Do you even have a clue what all the fuss is about? Forgive my stupidity – I’m completely clueless myself; but I don’t think I’ll have any hope of ever becoming a rich bitch if I remain clueless about money and finance. It’s not like I have the option of marrying a rich man. In the first place I am already married and in the second place rich men are usually looking for girls in their 20s.

So I’ve started off my morning reading an article on the Wall Street Journal website titled, We’re Not Headed for a Depression. I’ve been finding the talk about a possible depression ridiculous myself. I think the media intentionally prey on the ignorance and gullibility of the masses. They try to make more of stories in order to keep people watching their news coverage, and everyone goes around talking about “tough economic times” when they have no clue what’s really going on. They couldn’t explain the nature of the financial crisis if asked. They only know what the media is telling them; and the people in the media themselves have no real clue.
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I admit that I don’t have much of a brain when it comes to finance and economics; but I’m trying to learn what I can and to keep up with the names and stories that are making US and world finance and economics headline news. Everybody and their grandmother knows that there’s an economic crisis. The news media have been talking about nothing else; but I doubt I’m the only person out here who’s still wondering exactly what is really going on and how it affects the little people if it affects the little people at all.

In my ignorance what seems to be going on is that the banks and companies that send us threatening letters when we can’t pay our bills, who hire collection people to harass us and our children every day, have found themselves in trouble and have gone to the government crying and seeking help. When we cry to them they have no compassion. They send sheriffs to serve us. They take us to court. “You shouldn’t have borrowed if you knew you might run into a situation where you can’t pay”, they tell us.

When they cry they get billions of dollars to bail them out of their crisis; but like I said there’s much I don’t understand. Maybe it does affect the little guy somehow. Maybe if a banks fails and you have money in that bank you lose your money or something like that. Maybe that’s why the goverment came to the rescue – to protect the money of all the innocent people who would have lost their life savings trusting it all to the assumed security of a bank.

Image: Smart Woman by stephen leung via Flickr

According to the title of a best-selling book by author David Bach, smart women finish rich; and if you were to do a little research on your own it won’t take you too long to discover for yourself that the richest women in the world are all very smart. Even if they inherited their daddy’s money or their dead husband’s money, they still had to find a way to maintain the wealth they inherited and to keep the wealth growing just the same way the richest self-made women had to grow their wealth and keep it growing year after year. Most of them did it by cultivating highly capable brains. Stupidity doesn’t pay ladies.

So here we are talking about become rich bitch forex traders; but we don’t know a thing about trading or the economics that form the foundation of currency trading. How can we hope to have any chance whatsoever of succeeding as forex traders if we don’t have substantial knowledge on the subject?

So let’s get serious shall we? Realizing we don’t have the brain of a Zoe Cruz and as such will never have the advantage of a Harvard education, let’s set some realistic goals and expectations for our ambitions to become successful trading forex from our living room, kitchen, bedroom or which ever room in our house, apartment or other dwelling place we use as our work at home office. Let’s fill the gaping gap that leaves us  puzzled when we read about interest rates, consumer price indexes (CPI), gross domestic products (GDP), trade deficits and all the economical terms that play a part in moving the foreign exchange market in which we plan to be trading currency for profit.