Information comes to me strange ways. On the way back to my place from doing laundry, the free magazine "Bay Area Parent" was strewn across my steps. The cover story was on Tim Hudson "Huddy", star pitcher for the Oakland A's and the caption read "A's Hurler Tim Hudson: On Being a Big League Dad". How fortuitious since part of my screenplay is about my baseball player dude's relationship to his young son. The article definitely goes into the research folder.

I read the headlines on SF Gate and was shocked to find out that Nasdaq was at April 1997 lows. I knew the stock market would tank and go down to 98 levels, but never in my wildest dreams did I think the Nasdaq sink that low. Just think in 1999, there were all these articles everywhere about how great the stock market was, especially the Nasdaq. In early 2000, the Nasdaq volume was at 5,000. Now in mid 2002 it's quarter of that volume at 1200.

I wonder how many poor people bought the hype about the stock market. I know so many peopel who lost money. I started telling people in 1999 to get out of the market while the market was still high. All my friends, even the really good ones, laughed at me. I wonder who's laughing now. I made money in 2000 and then got the hell out and switched everything over to a money market fund. My investment portfolio value is higher than it was in 2000 and keeping pace with inflation. I can't say the same is true for all of my friends' investment portfolio. Silly people!!!

And what's worse is that I don't think people in general will make the connection to not believe what the papers and TV are telling them. No matter what the newspapers and TV people are saying, you've got to research the stuff and come to your own conclusions. I knew the market was overhyped. I had put together a financial business plan for a startup company before and had to predict when a company would make money. The thing that should have been obvious was none of these overhyped tech stocks had much of revenue stream but a hell of an expense stream. Way too much money being spent and not any money coming in. The tech people spent wildly and lavishly without revenue to pay for it. They were reckless and arrogant but the biggest fools were the people who bought their stock and believed their messed up business plans and models. These tech stock people broke every business rule on how to start a company, rules that have worked since humankind invented businesses. Is it any wonder they all failed and everything came crashing down in a serious way? Silly people who hosed investors and themselves and sillier people who bought the hype and the serious flaunting of basic business rules. Part of me feels sorry for the people who lost money and the other part says "there's a sucker born every minute" and I'mj ust glad that some of the time, I'm not one of them.