It is funny to see the comment "谁再跟我说股票，谁就是反革命！It all depends on one's own experience. Anyone here still remembers Excite or Netscape stocks? Excite had a market price of $26 billion once but ended up with zero value a few years back. Today Google's stock has created about 1000 millionaire employees (1 out of 5 employees) and two billionaires (some of them are still on papers and some have already cashed out). Sir John M. Templeton with a humble family background borrowed $10,000 in 1939 and purchased $100 worth of every single stock on NYSE which was below $1 per share. And his timing could not be worse when Hitler invaded Poland in the fall of 1939. However, his vision made him the first bucket of gold. 50 years late he 金盆洗手，sold his mutual funds to Franklin Resources for $913 million and he pocketed $440 million. By the way he is considered one of the best stockpickers in our time.
As an amature stockpicker I have had my ups and downs. However, I was able to cash in some of my stock gains (after tax) to buy three houses in the States....
