I just signed up for a writing class. I'm hoping it will get me in gear to write again. Now that my job and home life are somewhat settled, or as settled as they can be in these economically troubled times of ours, I want to start writing again.

I was going to start writing on Tuesday, but decided I needed to read a book for inspiration. I had a few books that I borrowed from a friend years ago, but never read and I'd like to return them to her, so I picked a book from that pile.

I'm reading "Liar's Poker: Rising through the Wreckage on Wall Street" by Michael Lewis. It's a story about a bond trader from Salomon Brothers in the 80's. The book is written in the first person, which is the point of view for my first novel, so I'm trying to see how this author does this. Okay, I know I'm procrastinating from writing but reading is research for me.

In the last two years people have been bemoaning all the excesses of the dot com culture and all the money that was spent and lost, but in the 80's the same kind of thing happened in New York with bond trading. And like the dot com bust, the roof fell in on bond trading as well. Perhaps not quite so fast, but lots of money was lost and spent in 80's as well on a small number of very young bond traders right of business schools.

The parallels are amazing actually, but this is a good thing I think because it means that in another 10 years, some other new thing, some new industry will emerge in business and generate a ton of revenue. To make money from this new, new thing, you just have to spot the emerging business. Like who knew 10-12 years ago that the internet for at least a couple of years would be such a great investment.

If you could spot the new emerging business and get in first, when the new, new business explodes you could sell your investment and make your millions that way. Maybe it's nanotechnology or probably defense related industries. Don't you know that this war on terrorism is just going to keep on going which is bad for the public, but great for industries in the defense sector.

I would also look at commodities trading, specifically food. With all the weather changes in the world, I would think there would be huge fluctuations in food prices. And if the mad cow scare in Canada pans out and spreads to the US, I would expect to see huge fluctuations in beef and cattle prices as well.

Not quite sure how if you can make money with SARS other than by investing in biotech companies, which will probably be looking for a vaccine if SARS develops any further. Someone has to benefit economically from the world's disasters.