Cobb

Funny, now that I think back on it, I made all my money in stocks. All of my diversification failed me. My REITs crashed, my mutual funds sucked (more C Class bullshit - I hate brokers). The only thing that held up were my strips. Do trust the US Government securities and don't get greedy. It works for Greenspan; that's good enough for me. But to close that story out, most of my money was in the company where I worked, and I worked the hell out of it. Still, I got screwed.

Chastened, I vowed never to invest any real money (IE money I didn't care about pissing away) in any midcap company. I know exactly how much brains it takes to run such a contraption and believe me, these aren't people you want to invest with. Not that they're not good people, they're just not the best. So I dropped all of even my casual tracking of such promising companies. I don't want a company that promises, I want a company that delivers.

Instead, I picked a very few bigboard companies that ordinary fool investors have never heard about who were
A) doing acquisitions in industries that are proven.
B) paying dividends (maybe)
C) haven't split in the past year.

It basically came down to three. Boeing, GE and the killer stock. Since this security has done well, I'm relatively confident that when I get back into investing for fun and profit, I'll get both.

Check out Danaher. I would have made a pile since mid 2001.