Sure it is. Now tell me which market Sir Isaac played. Tell me what happened to Ike's Lucent shares while the apples beaned him.

        “I'm getting a little anxious, Charlie” is what I say. Charlie is my Financial Guy. I like saying I have a Financial Guy. It makes me sound rich. Only now, I need Charlie to talk me off the ledge.

        I've been a good American. Worked hard, saved, invested, planned for kids' college, dreamed of 62 and the sand between my toes. It was a good plan a few years ago. Now it's Enron.

        Charlie says hang in there.

        Yeah, OK. Meanwhile I'll listen to the Wall Street Journal Report on radio. It sounds like money burning. They should do that segment to the beat of a heart-lung machine. They should play “Taps.”

        Stick to your plan, Charlie says. Remember the fundamentals. Dollar-cost average.

        OK, fine. I'll invest the same amount each month. Then, I'll watch it disappear.

        It's like a magic trick. Where did that white dove go? Except with magic, the dove always comes back. Where's the dove, Charlie?

        I could dollar-cost average a home in Sun Valley by now. I could pay Junior Griffey for a day.

        “It will go back up. I won't predict exactly when,” Charlie says.

        “Why not?” I ask. “I need to know, Chuck. I need to know now. Because that 50-inch flat screen is looking a whole lot better than High Yield Mutual Fund #1.”

Why buy?

        In fact, I see no reason not to take all my hard-earned cash and buy stuff. If I'd done that three years ago, when the market launched its remarkable tank-fest, I'd be living large. Or at least medium.

        “Focus on the long range,” Charlie says. Charlie has one of those, smooth, even, medication-time voices, like a shrink or a 911 operator. You could see him talking to Tony Soprano.

        The voice comes in handy lately, when every investor is bungee jumping without the bungee. “None of us can control what's going on,” Charlie says. “What we can control is how we react.”

        Oh, yeah, I can do that. I hear these “analysts” and I want to rip their gold-chained throats out. I see these guys on the trading floor, looking for any excuse to sell shares, driving the market lower with their pessimism and cowardice, and I want to loosen the lug nuts on their BMWs, the little weasels, who are they to control my dough, I mean a man works hard his whole damned . . .

        “Paul,” Charlie says.

        “WHAT!!!”

        “You need to think long term.”

        “What?”

        “You're in this for the long haul. You need to remember where you want to be in the long run.”

        Where I wanna be is on the 1st tee. Where I'm gonna be, Charlie, is right here. The Enquirer doesn't know it yet, but the retirement has been delayed. As of today, I will be stealing the company's money writing columns until I'm 104.

        Charlie says we could move my incredibly shrinking cash pile into something safe. I tell him I already have a mattress.

Who read them?

        “Do you read your mutual fund statements, Charlie?” Because I don't. I don't know anyone who does.

        I don't know a single investor who does anything but pile them with the junk mail and hand them to the Rumpke guys. Straight away.

        Charlie does read his. “But not right away,” he says. Then again, he never has, even when opening every statement was like seeing Ed McMahon at your front door. “I know what its going to be,” Charlie says. “I don't need it tomorrow. If I've determined the people handling it are competent, I'm not going to get out and jump back in. That's how you lose money. Now come down off that ledge, big guy.”

        “OK,” I say. But if it continues this way, I'm back up there soon. Sitting in my $5,000, leather, back-rubber chair I bought from Sharper Image with the money I formerly plowed into Aggressive Growth Killer Stock Fund #2.

        e-mail Paul Daugherty at pdaugherty@enquirer.com

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