A STOCK MARKET ANGEL

I don't want to be superstitious or anything, but, I believe I have a stock market angel that watches over me.

I'm not educated on the stock market, can hardly understand stock reports, have difficulty reading the stock page, I do however, research the companies that I think I'd like to invest my money in.

In the past I would occasionally buy stocks. I bought Cisco at the advise of my brother and it went through the roof. I ended up selling it because I needed the money. Shortly thereafter, it went through the floor.

I bought Abercrombie & Fitch because I found that that's all my step daughter and her nieces would wear, it hit a record high before I sold it.

I purchased Nordstroms, it did really well also.

To date, I've only purchased one stock that lost money. . . I don't recall the specifics, but, the company had applied for an equipment patent for medical purposes. The stock did well until they were confronted with a patent infringement lawsuit. The company executives jumped ship, sold off their stock. That's never a good sign. The stock went way down.

My husband has a retirement program set up through his work. There are a variety of mutual funds that are available to purchase through his program. In the beginning, about 10 years ago, I thought Dodge and Cox DODGX sounded good. I began purchasing it at $75 per share, I purchased several hundred shares over time - they currently are at $153.

Over the past couple of years, learning about the lowering value of the US dollar, I thought it would be good to buy into a foreign funds. I chose SSEMX or SSgA-Emerging Markets. I'm not really sure what the returns on it have been, there seems to be so many conflicting numbers, but, moneycenral is listing it as 1 year return = 65.82%; 3 year return = 45.92%. etc. ttp://moneycentral.msn.com/detail/stock_quote?Symbol=SSEMX

Oddly, because of the high returns on SSEMX, and DODGX having slowed down to a 4% return, I decided to sell the DODGX and buy all SSEMX. Two days later the US stock market went into a downward spiral. I don't know if its leveled back out yet or not, but, SSEMX has sure gone up.

If my investment techniques sound vague, its because they are. I have almost no idea what I'm doing other than using some deductive reasoning, intuition, and prayer.

I'm so grateful that my investments have turned out so well though because my husband and I have had to borrow heavy on this retirement account. Recently when we took out a hardship loan of $13,000, SSEMX increased so quickly that I hadn't even realized that they money had been withdrawn.

Our account was $67,000 this past August and is currently at $84,000. Our ability to continue to invest in the account has been suspended for six months, so, to see these types of increases feels a bit like a life saver.

Now that my husband and I have made the commitment to be financially responsible, I'm beginning to see signs of that angel watching over my everyday finances.