Market Crash Course
Everyone knows what happens to a fool and his fortune. In John Rothchild's case, however, the process was particularly brutal.</br></br>He dove into the financial markets with $16,500 and casual dreams of being wealthy. Eighteen months later, the Dow had soared, but Rothchild's original stake had been shaved all the way down to $800. He couldn't have lost much more if he'd been trying.</br></br>This neat trick wasn't accomplished solo. Rothchild sought help from stockbrokers, commodities traders, interest-rates guru Henry Kaufman, risk arbitrageurs, short-sellers, financial planners, stock analysts and the trash cans of insider trading whiz Ivan Boesky. Almost always, Rothchild found his advisers as befuddled as himself. And if they didn't think that, they were soon confounded anyway.</br></br>"People say the market's this or the market's that, and they begin to think they can understand it," a corn trader on the Chicago Board of Trade told Rothchild. "They discover they're wrong. They can't understand it. The market is ... the market is God."</br></br>Don't feel too bad for Rothchild, though. At least he gained a book out of his ordeal. (It's called, of course, A Fool and His Money.) Subtitled The Odyssey of an Average Investor, the book seeks to demystify the experts by pointing out the pitfalls of investing in general and mindless investing in particular. It's an idea that's getting a sympathetic reception in the wake of the market's October plunge.