PALO ALTO, Calif. (CNN/Money) -
With the market on a seven-month tear, it's time for some questions.
The first one is: Are you feeling good about this market?
I sure am. If you're like me and you've kept a sizable chunk of your savings invested in stocks, then you've got to be pretty happy. Tracking the ups and downs of my investments was a real downer around February, but I must say it's lately been a lot of fun.
But as we all feel richer, someone's got to play the spoil sport and ask some slightly more difficult questions.
For instance, when you felt good like this in 1999, what did you do? Did you pile into the market at higher and higher prices?
If so, we all know how that turned out.
Which leads to another question about your stock/bond mix. And as things got bleaker and bleaker, did you hold off adding to your stocks, and pile instead into bonds (a lot of people did, you know).
If so, you've just missed a huge run in stocks.
Similarly, you might be thinking that stocks now seem safe, and are gearing up for a switch again. But while nobody would argue that bonds are a particularly attractive investment right now, you have to keep them in the mix. Do you have a plan for keeping your allocation in order?
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Also: Where are you getting your investment advice these days? Lots of folks were quick to blame Wall Street analysts when their picks did poorly last time. Few critics were heard when Henry Blodget's calls were working. Are you relying today on tips heard in the elevator or ideas you picked up for free on TV? Well, you get what you pay for.
Okay, last two questions: Why ask all these tough questions? Can't we just enjoy this while it lasts?
To that, I quote from a wonderful commencement address cartoonist Garry Trudeau gave this weekend at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.:
"The impertinent question is the glory and engine of human inquiry. Copernicus asked it and shook the foundations of Renaissance Europe. Darwin asked it and redefined humankind's very sense of itself. Thomas Jefferson asked it and was so invigorated by the asking that he declared it one of our inalienable rights. Two hundred years later, Martin Luther King asked it, and forced the country to honor those rights. Daniel Defoe asked the impertinent question and invented the novel. James Joyce asked it and reinvented the novel, which was promptly banned. Jean Paul Sartre asked it and inspired Simone de Beauvior, who asked it and inspired a whole generation of women to question what they were doing with men like Jean Paul Sartre. The Wright Brothers asked it and were ignored for five years. Bill Gates asked it and was ignored for five minutes, which was long enough for him to dominate the industry."
Have fun. Make money. But be careful.
Adam Lashinsky is a senior writer for Fortune magazine. Send e-mail to Adam at lashinskysbottomline@yahoo.com.
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