Witz Pickz: Stock Tipz

I’m a sure thing. You should know this about me. Like balls cold weather on the east coast and a lack of leg-room on a plane, I will always lose when betting on something. Me and gambling are like John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga in the movie The Sure Thing. Maybe more so.

I used to sports bet. I’d bet between 5 and 10 dollars on games and usually took the favorite. That’s a pretty stupid thing to do, because even when picking parlays with massive favorites, somebody is bound to lose and you never win more than you’re apt to lose. So I ran out of money that way—turns out Pedro Martinez didn’t go 30-0 ever, and I can’t make money sports betting.

Roulette will always turn up the other color. The dealer will hit blackjack. I don’t have any idea how to play craps, and the algorithm is always in the other guy’s favor when I go all in playing online poker. My horses, greyhounds, and marbles will always finish last.

In high school I got into stock trading. I had some money from my Bar Mitzvah (boy were those the days), and I took it out of the mutual funds they were in and bought some stocks, partially from my own half-assed misguided research, and half based on my extremely well-read, intelligent friend. Remember when everyone made an assload of money on tech-stocks? Yeah. I was the guy who bought too late. When the boom busted. I lost all my money, and had to settle for a great capital gains loss ten years later on my taxes.

So with shockingly mild trepidation, I bought some stocks last week. Apple stock. I believe in the “buy what you know” theory of stocks, and what I know is that I’m probably going to lose all my money. I bought way too high and have since watched as Apple has dipped down to 160. Thankfully, I’m in it for the long term and feel good enough Apple that it’s not going to fold. I might hate the ads, but I love the products, and now that windows runs better on Macs, I might even buy one.

I had a little money left over in the account, so I decided today to spend it on something. While randomly searching symbols, I stumbled across CMG. CMG is what I wanted to buy four years ago, but didn’t know it existed outside of McDonald’s Corp. CMG is CHIPOTLE MEXICAN GRILLE! If I’d known and bought it back when I wanted to, I would have gotten it at 40—it’s now at 120. EFF. So following the buy what you know theory, I bought myself a couple shares of CMG, not so much because I expect to make money off it, but because I love Chipotle and I’d feel ok about losing money to it. I mean, I already drop cash on their burritos, why not buy their stock?

So what I’m trying to tell you in this column is DO NOT BUY CMG. DO NOT BUY AAPL. That's my stock tip. Buy the farthest thing from them and your life will be better and you might just make some money. But if you’re looking for some tax deductions this year, buy up the same stocks I do, and let’s ride this flume to the splashdown.

E'erbody In the Club Gettin' (stock) Tipz,

Witz