Get in early

That's the last headline I wrote before I retired from advertising in 1989. It was for an emerging markets website, and in retrospect, it made sense at the time. After all, Nathan Rothschild said that the secret of his success was that he always got in early and sold too soon. Today the line would have had to be Get out early, something nobody did when the crash came. I confess that it happened to one of my stocks. I owned a solid, 110 year old company that had never missed a dividend or a losing quarter, until October 2008 when the bottom fell out. My first margin call, and last as far as I'm concerned. Set your clocks back 50 years folks and see if it will come back. It will help if you're ten years old.