Saturday, March 08, 2008

More Dreams

Stocks
Last night I dreamed that I put the majority of our cash into medical supply and pharmaceutical companies. Over a few months the stocks doubled.

Then disaster struck.

A flood of lawsuits hit the companies. Some of the lawsuits were legitimate, most were frivolous or riding the coattails the legitimate ones. Overnight the price of the stocks plunged to less than half of what I'd purchased them. I was getting ready to sell them when Jonathan insisted that we wait it out. "We don't want to send the
wrong message to the companies." Yeah, but we might lose everything with this sinking ship.
"But they are good companies, they'll make it."

It's funny, because this is almost exactly how the Merck scenario went, except that the roles were reversed. I'd owned a few shares of Merck for years (even before I went to college!) Then the Vioxx lawsuits hit. I decided to wait to sell because I figured the company would rebound. (As a side note, can you imagine if everyone who had experienced negative side effects from aspirin had sued? I suspect aspirin would have been yanked from the shelves by the FDA.

Common and not so common side effects
After all, people have died taking aspirin. Clearly it's not a "safe" medicine. Better off taking a placebo. In pain? Too bad!)

So I held onto Merck until November of last year when Jonathan read in the Wall Street Journal about a fresh assault on the company. Reluctantly I sold thinking maybe it really was time to bail, and naturally the stock jumped up...

Anyways, my dream ended without resolution. Aside from day traders, who has nightmares about dropping stock values anyways?

The Bunny
I also dreamed about a large brown rabbit. This bunny came bounding into our yard and hopped over to Matthew. I panicked a bit thinking it might be a rabid rabbit. I mean, what kind of sane rabbit hops over to a five-year old? I warned Matthew to stay back. Then I saw the tags on the rabbit and realized it was a pet. I let Matthew pet it, and it snuggled contentedly in his arms. He told me that we needed rabbit after we returned this rabbit to its owners. Yes bunnies are cute, but all I could think of was chewed up electrical cords and upholstery. Shudder. How about a nice fish? Nope, we needed a bunny. Then I woke up.

The Nightmare
In my last dream I was bleeding quite heavily. I was frightened for the baby, and at the same time realizing there wasn't much hope. I woke up practically in tears from this dream. Thankfully I wasn't dreaming for long.

Poor Jonathan gets regaled with all of my wacky dreams in the mornings. I usually forget them after that. It seems that pregnancy does make them much more vivid though.

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