It seems that every day I turn on the TV and find a Poker game. Texas No Limit seems to be all the rage these days. I love watching it. When I discuss this with others, their response is always the same, You should play. Ah, but what they dont know is I stay out of the kitchen. As far as risk to reward ratio. Thats a gamble Im not willing to take. I prefer to invest my money. Sometimes I gamble in the stock market, but as long as I stay within my comfort zone (long term), I dont mind.

Tolerable risk should be the goal of every investor. Know your limits! Here are my big three donts:

1. Dont invest more than 30% of your portfolio in risky ventures;

2. Dont let your broker/advisor talk you into an investment;

3. Dont gamble with money youre not ready to loose.

Heres a poem I wrote about a real person.

There once was a man from the North East Who thought he could tame the great beast Money in hand, he headed to Wall Street A Bull market it was, an IPO investment he couldnt beat The morning bell rang and he started to buy

Drug store, MP3, Martha Stewart, and Be Free, Flashnet, Redhat, Eloan, and Goldman Sachs, Foundry Networks, Agilent, NextCard, and JNI corp, Goto, PCOrder, Free Markets, and Intertrust technologies, Ivillages, Keynote Systems, Radware, and Women, Kana, The Street, Internet Initiative, and Insweb, WWE, TicketMaster, CitySearch, and Ziff Davis.

He felt so good, like a young man and spry The days rolled along and the market did swell Up 80% by the close of the bell.

It was over the next few days that reality hit home The stocks started to plummet like the downfall of Rome A huge loss was incurred, sell everything without care Along with riding the bull you get tamed by the bear!

This real man Im speaking of has class action law suits against every one of these companies and the underwriters of the IPO. Heres a link to the law firm, Lovell Stewart Halebian LLP http://www.lshllp.com/homejump.ihtml?page=classaction.ihtml that happens to be representing this man in all these cases. To this gentlemen I have 6 wordsif you cant stand the heat.