Tea with AK71: A piece of cake?

A couple of weeks ago, someone told me that he was thinking of putting some of his savings in the stock market.  He asked me how much should he put in. I asked him how much was he willing to lose. That stumped him and he looked puzzled. He went quiet and then, with that same puzzled look, asked me if I was not going to help him make money. Woah! Stop right there.  I decided to give him a history lesson there and then.  Question: Excuse me, are you an investor?

No one should ever enter the stock market thinking that he would only make money.  That must be the grandest delusion ever.  Don't ever get into the stock market if one thinks of only making a lot of money and not losing some (or a lot, for that matter). 

Entering the stock market is just like entering a relationship.  Don't ever get into one if one thinks that every relationship will have a nice "happily ever after" fairy tale ending.  There will be rough patches.  There will be sleepless nights.  There will be headaches.  However, they are part and parcel of the learning process and they, believe it or not, enrich our life experience, well, in a perverse way, whether or not the relationship works out in the end.

We can't have our cake and eat it and well should we know this. Right, a spot of tea and, perhaps, some cake, anyone?