The Betrayed Investor
Americans bought into the idea that stocks could only make them richer. Then the market bubble burst -- and then came Enron
It's 2 a.m., and Jim Tucci is staring wide-eyed at the ceiling--another sleepless night. Instead of counting sheep, he's anxiously tallying up how much he has lost in the stock market. Half of his $400,000 nest egg, he figures, has evaporated in just two years. Forget the retirement property on the Gulf Coast. Forget the long-planned trip to Italy with his wife. Tucci, a 60-year-old sales manager at a voice-recording company in Boston, admits he blew a wad on speculative tech stocks during the Internet bubble. But a year ago, he dove for safety in blue-chip stocks like IBM (IBM ), Merrill Lynch (MER ), General Motors (GM ), and Delta Air Lines (DAL ). Now, 40% of that is gone. Tucci feels suckered. "I'm paralyzed. I can't sell because I'd take such a big loss. I'm sure as heck not going to buy anything. And even if I were, who would I listen to for advice? No one seems to even give off a whiff of honesty about any of this stuff. These days, I just pray a lot."
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