here comes the bull

Stock market, share market.

Is there a difference? Apparently not. What are derivatives? What are commodities? And how many stock options are there? Is a broker also known as a remisier? Will I reap my riches by the time I'm 40? Too many questions, whichever way I look at it. So best just do it first, and learn as I go.

What do I know about playing with shares? Little, based on the sheer number of terms that have me looking at them blankly. But everyone has to start somewhere, and I'm starting at the end of the month.

So which ignorant fool actually wants to enter a world that is fast crashing? A world thrown into turmoil by greed and deceit. Well, I'm basing my investments on the fact that 'what goes down, will surely come up'. Sound principle right? Why spend hours poring over graphs and text when the only outcome is either buy or sell? So yeah, that'll be my personal motto as I wheel and deal with hundreds at first, and thousands not much later.

Think of it this way. The MBA-armed, Italian-suited, money-laden executives of Wall Street have nicely landed the world economy in a pleasant mess, to put it mildly; they who speak in a language native to financial centres, they whose Bible is surely the Wall Street Journal, they who worship Bloomberg, they who have power lunches and even bigger power trips. So why not go against the grain, so to speak, and buy when everyone says to run? Besides, I doubt I'll be pumping in wads of cash, perhaps a couple of hundreds tops. I'll just add to the amount sporadically, and who knows in 20 years' time.

It seems the first thing I need to do is open a CDS (Central Depository System) account with a broker. Submit some documents, and I'll be standing on the rooftop shouting out "Baby, I'm ready to go!" Still unsure about the finer points (and most of the big ones too), but I'm not going to let some trivialities get in the way of my riches. But those interested in dabbling in the share market, head on to Bursa Malaysia's website - it teaches greenhorns about market terminology, and pretty much everything else. There's also a list of brokers and an online risk calculator.

So move over Gordon Gecko, the Barbarian is waiting impatiently at your gate.