Reply #36: After market bust, small investors wary

[UpInArms]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13503331.htm

Oh, those heady days of the stock market boom back in the late 90s, when people were chucking their jobs to make fortunes as day traders or huddling in investment clubs plotting buys and sells that would make them millionaires.

Five years after the market went from bull to bear to flat, small investors are still out there, but they're considerably fewer -- and considerably wiser.

''We lost money like everybody else, but we didn't suffer too badly because we were extraordinarily diversified,'' says Patricia Edwards, a founding member of the Beanstalk Investment Club, which survived the rocky ride but only with about half its members.

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Another lesson he learned: bail out quickly. ''When you see the bubble bursting, don't go against it,'' he says.

Today's equivalent of the stock market may be real estate, which many observers say is another balloon ready to pop.

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