|  JAN 1984

WHY I BECAME A JUNKMAN by Bill Dunbar

WHY I BECAME A JUNKMAN by Bill Dunbar IN THE BEGINNING My wife hurled the folder into the air, scattering it all over the family room. ""Take your damn stocks!"" she screamed. ""I'll never look at another one again!"" Promises, promises. I stomped out of the room and slammed the door almost before she started picking up the pieces. That wasn't our first fight over the stock market nor our last, but their violence subsided from then on because we decided at that point to settle out of court with a ""financial divorce,"" dividing up the various issues as if we were picking players for a baseball game. When we got through we had two portfolios, ""His"" and ""Hers."" Now we'll see who's right and who's the dummy. My wife likes underdogs and sticks with them forever, in sickness and in health — you can almost hear the wedding bells ring. Not me. I get tired of an issue after a while, especially when the price goes down and it keeps reminding me what a dope I was for having bought it in the first place. Then I trump up a perfectly logical reason for getting rid of it. The next several years were a long and trying time, pure hell, during which my wife's fund took off and left mine way back there choking on the exhaust fumes. No matter what I did I just couldn't catch up. I tried fundamental approaches, technical methods, and a number of schemes of my own concoction, and I didn't do so badly either, but I couldn't catch up to my wife. Until I became a junk man. Now my fund is on top and I'm wearing the pants again. I'll tell you how it happened.

by Bill Dunbar