A squirrel's Stock Market

"Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Nest Girls!"

You probably all remember my stock picking successes during the go-go years in the technology sector. Like most people when the crash came I lost all my nuts. I learned a very valuable lesson during those dark days of declining DOW downsizing. Never put all your nuts in one knothole.

This has helped me during this time of Depression Like market conditions that have cleaned out not only the bank account of the people I live with, but also their bird feeder. They can't afford to fill that thing with black oil sunflower anymore. Not only did oil jump 20% in one day but also black oil sunflower. Can you believe people are putting the stuff in their cars. What a total waste of squirrel food. But I am not worried. I learned my lesson. I started saving early and I didn't put my nuts in the commodity market. I put them in a knothole.

I had a neighbor do that recently. A little red squirrel named Cocky. He had all the answers. Never stopped to say as much as hello. Just running all the time, collecting food, raiding bird nests, chewing into bird feeders, and breaking into attics. He was giving decent squirrels, who wanted to go straight, a crooked reputation.

This little furball would even steal from a brother squirrel. But what goes around, comes around. That little tramp hid every tidbit of food he didn’t eat immediately in one spot. He had a food cache that would make corn silo pale in comparison.

No one let on we knew where his gold mine was. We let him work all fall gathering and pillaging. On Thanksgiving the whole neighborhood met at his place and fed until our faces were so full we couldn’t bend our heads down to look at our big bellies.

It’s going to be a long winter for that commodities trader. He has gone short on nuts and long on cold. I can’t guarantee he will learn a lesson from this experience. Some individuals never learn. But let this be a lesson to the rest of us. Don’t be greedy, diversify your retirement nest eggs into more than one knothole, be neighborly, honest and frugal.