John Williams, a disc jockey from Long Beach, Calif., is available for weddings and birthday parties. He also does real estate closings. Williams, 40, recently decided to hitch his fortunes to the Southern California home market, buying houses, fixing them up and -- in the parlance of our times -- flipping them for a quick profit. "I saw so many friends and colleagues getting rich," he says. "I wanted to get rich too.":Williams has made some money -- he flipped his first two properties for acombined gain of $ 27,000 -- and quickly discovered that he's not alone. "I went to look at some homes in Palmdale-Lancaster [an area of Los Angeles County]," he says, "and the woman showing me and a group of other investors around was a hairdresser who works for Century 21 on theside. We went into Taco Bell for lunch. The girl at the register heard us talking, and she told us she just got her mortgage broker's license."
Kind of makes this anecdote spring to mind:
Joseph P. Kennedy was heavily invested in the booming stock market of the 1920s, until, legend has it, he went to Wall Street to visit his broker, JP Morgan, about a week before the great crash of 1929. On his way, he supposedly stopped to have his shoes shined. While doing so, he asked the shoeshine boy for the news on the street. The boy, named Billy, suggested that he buy U.S. Steels and RCA stocks because he had "heard they are hot." Shoes sparkling, Kennedy then continued on to JP Morgan's offices, where he liquidated all his holdings. Returning home, his wife asked him what he bought. "I sold everything," he said. "When the shoeshine boy starts giving you tips, it is time to get out of the market."
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