Reply #51: my shares were inherited and so pretty much "free money" as

[mulsh]

far as I am concerned. Grandfathers on both sides did the gambling and were pretty smart about it mostly. One of them actually was a bookie.

At one point in the nineties my father called me and said, "if I die right now you and your bother will be millionaires...on paper" That's all the shares were... paper. share values fluctuate. I'm fortunate that I didn't gamble any real money on them. I hope your wife is right and they regain some of their former value.

I feel for the people who were relying on stocks like this for their retirement and other stuff.

In the first Bush depression I watched 2 401k's I invested a little money in vaporize. Fortunately they were both under a couple of thousand dollars. Unfortunately at the time I was the go-to guy for retirement benefits at my union which administered one of the 401k's. I spent lots of time being told to "get my money back" by people who also had their 401k's vaporize. Watching share value slip into negative numbers isn't much fun if you don't have some sort of sophisticated bet going.