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Ted: Besides, if alfalfa is as important to investing as it was to us on the farm, he must really know what he is talking about.

Mary: That was Alpha, dear, whoever she is?

Mary: My only reservation about this investment plan is the shade of green used in the pie chart.

Ted: I agree.

Mary: If the color were a little softer, yet more forceful and more assuring, I believe that I would feel more comfortable putting all of our life savings into his retirement plan.

Mary: Dear, maybe we should go back and talk to that nice young lady who showed us that lovely scatter chart and who wanted to put us on the effervescent frontier.

Ted: She said that the investments she is recommending did well in the past (she said that's why she picked them) and so they should do well for us in the future?

Ted: As I understood her, when we review our account with her, we will sell those investments that are up, but have not done as well as other investments we don't currently own in the recent past, and buy new investments that are like ours but that have done better than ours in the recent past.

Ted: If any of our current investments are down and have not done as well as other investments that are like ours since the last review, we will sell those investments that have done poorly in the recent past and move to other new investments that have done better than ours in the recent past.

Ted: Apparently, if we keep taking profits on our investments that have not done as well as other investments that we do not currently own in the past and buy other investments that have done better than the investments we currently own in the past and if we keep taking losses on the investments we currently own that have not done as well as other investments that we do not currently own in the past and buy other investments that we do not currently own but have done better than our investments in the past, we will eventually end up with investments that will do well for us in the future.

Mary: That is until we sell them to buy other investments that have done better than ours in the recent past.

Ted: Who knows, we may even buy back one of the investments we once owned and sold in the past because at that time it was not doing as well as other investments in the past but has recently been doing better than one of the investments we currently own in the most recent past.

Ted: On occasion, we may even be lucky enough to buy investments that have done the best in the past and do well in the present and in the future; at least for a while.

Mary: She said that on occasion she may recommend a new investment that has no past; but, she said she can decide what we should do with it after we buy it and wait for it to have some past of its own so she can compare it to the past performance of other investments and, depending on how it has been and is performing against those investments, determine how it will perform in the future and decide whether we should hold or sell and then buy other investments that have done better in the recent past than the new investment we currently have.

Mary: Make sense?

Ted: I guess that this notice in bold print at the bottom of the page really doesn't mean anything — 'Past performance is not an indicator of future investment results.'

Mary: This plan might be an exception to that rule because she used a computer to make her recommendations.

Ted: Better yet, she said that with margin we can increase our profits by buying more investments that have performed well in the recent past.

Mary: If we decide to mortgage our home, as she suggested, and buy and sell 'putt' and call options — though we apparently will have to be naked (?) sometimes, we might even do better.

Ted: I wonder what kind of putter she uses?

Mary: I must admit that I was a little confused about hedging our investments that have done well in the recent past with commodities, gold, currencies, and hedge funds to reduce our investment risk.

Ted: I must confess that she completely lost me when she was talking about Andrew's Pitchfork, Bearish Belt Hold, Bearish Engulfing Pattern, Bearish Harami, Blow-Off Top, Blowoff, and Bollinger Bands.

Ted: I guess people don't buy stocks like IBM or McDonald's anymore?

Mary: I wonder how good these salespeople are at their jobs?

Ted: Good question.

Ted: Neither one of them offered and we didn't ask.

Mary: All we know is how well the investments that they are recommending have done in the past.

Ted: Well, at least these two salespeople seemed to be better than all the others who recommended an annuity no matter what we said.

Mary: Maybe we should do what Bob and Sandy are doing; trading options with red-arrow, green-arrow software; seems easy enough — green arrow, buy and red arrow, sell and double our money most of the time?

Ted: I wonder which one of these plans Warren Buffett would choose?

Mary: Ted, you have worked very hard all of your life and it is time for you to just relax and for us to just trust someone.

Ted: Anyway, in either case, what do we have to lose?