"DSK" wrote in message
...
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
..... I ran into one a few months ago who thanked me profusely for
telling him to buy Cisco in November of 1987, and call-protected NY AAA
insured munis yielding around 8%.


I'd thank you profusely if you could tell me where to buy some
call-protected insured munis yielding 8%, even if they weren't from NY.

Some things are a no-brainer.

DSK


It took immense effort for most customers to buy them, believe it or not.
They were hypnotized by the stock market. Bonds seemed boring. My mother in
law was always reading financial stuff and she insisted that I find her some
of those bonds. Everybody else needed to be educated.

One of our technical analysts, a guy named Ed Kerschner, ran an asset
allocation model that was brilliant. Not asset allocation as it's usually
thought of, adjusting portfolios to match your current goals, but a model
which predicted with uncanny accuracy which assets were more attractive at
the moment in terms of price (stocks, bonds or cash). Early in 1987, his
model began moving toward 90% bonds, 5% stocks and 5% cash, the breakdown in
early October. Few people listened in the time leading up to October 19th.
The model didn't expect every investor to shuffle their portfolio completely
to match his numbers, but it would've been a great idea to do something
rather than nothing.

I was still studying for the series 7 exam in that time period. On October
19th, mid-morning, the branch manager literally ran to my desk, said "You
passed your test- I can't talk now - go hang out with Jack so-and-so & see
if he can use any help talking to clients", and flew back to his office.
Around 5:00 PM, he handed me a bunch of cash, and asked if I'd mind going
out for a couple of bottles of scotch. :-) Learning about margin and risky
options trading in a book is one thing. Seeing real people's accounts turn
to crap (or even negative crap) in 4 hours is much different.