Beards Can Make You Rich

The great equity bull market trundles on; but maybe it's time to be contrarian?

And I don't mean hedge funds or using stock options; they're much too complicated and risky for me. No, I have had a brilliant idea brought on by seeing all those US class actions in which widows and orphans living in Huckleberry Finn-ish shacks in the Mid-West suddenly find themselves richer than they could ever have dreamed just because their Grandpaw invested a few dollars in some shooting-star like Enron which came crashing to earth: to be picked up by a bunch of whizz-kid lawyers in California who know how to turn dross into gold, courtesy of the SEC and the Supreme Court.

The Enrons of this world flourish during good times, and then implode when the bear gets out his claws. So, with a bear market around the corner, it's just a question of which of today's high-flying companies are tomorrow's Enrons.

You're going to say this is just a man-hating thing (and yes, I do have at least three good reasons to hate men) but I've been looking at the pictures of the bosses of companies which went south big-time, and I've noticed that almost all of them have beards, just like my exes. So I'm going to buy US$100-worth of shares in every NYSE company which (a) has a bearded ceo, and (b) whose share price has gone up by more than 50% in the last two years.

And I'll see you in court! In December, in my mink coat.