Bulls, Bears & a Croupier: The insider's guide to profiting from the Australian stockmarket

Chapter 3: No training and no idea

If truth be known, when I started life as a professional investor in 1998 I had no idea of how to invest. I had never bought a share for myself. The closest I had ever come to a tipple in the market was registering my wife’s name for the Telstra float in 1997. She received a small number of shares which, under my advice, she sold in the first few days of listing at around $2.60 each, a gain of about 30 per cent. We couldn’t believe someone could make such easy money by simply filling out a prospectus form, attaching a cheque and posting it off. It was a real eye opener. Had the smart guys been making such easy money for years and keeping it a secret from the rest of us? Just like that, Suzy had made enough ...