Rational Investing: Santa's lap always beckons, regardless of age

Clark Davis is a 34-year investment veteran and CEO of Saint Louis Investment Advisors, a specialized money-management company.

Next month's column will review the good and bad advice from my prognostications throughout 2003. (Check me out in the meantime if you would like. All the columns are archived on the SBJ Web site.)

In keeping with the season, it's time to lighten up a bit but not entirely.

The next two paragraphs are from my December 1999 column; however, the wish list is new and designed to appeal to Baby New Year in hopes that 2004 will bring acceptable excitement and pleasant surprises. We've had enough of the other kinds.

"I miss the trips with the kids to see Santa at the department store and having their pictures taken sitting on his lap and telling him their wish list. Those were fun times, like the visit when my eight-year-old son asked for a naked Barbie. (We had a heart-to-heart talk about that one.) Or the time, while waiting for them to examine every item in the toy department, I walked to the china area, picked up a crystal bowl, turned it over to check the price tag and it slipped from my hands, smashing into gazillions of shards every piece of crystal on the three glass shelves it crashed through.

"So I will try to recapture the spirit of those trips by circling the mall parking lot until I find a space and then walking in to visit St. Nick on my own. There probably won't be too many other 62-year-olds (make that 65 now) that stand in that line by themselves, waiting to sit on Santa's (hopefully reinforced) lap and share a wish list, but I'm gonna do it."

An end to reality programs that feature the devouring of critters not meant to be eaten. How does anyone watch those things without throwing up?

A return to American language usage that allows us to describe people, objects and events as they really are rather than in whatever are the politically correct terms. (I actually have friends who are handicapped, disabled, lame, blind, dying not something-or-other challenged.)

Politicians (from both sides of the aisle) who will make decisions on the basis of what is right rather than what will please their largest contributors.

A goat or pig barbecue celebrating the capture of both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Is the choice of meat offensive to their followers? Too bad.

Six strokes off my golf handicap. Or at least to play a course that gives out scorecards accompanied by pencils that have erasers.

An absence of class-action suits against any of the companies whose stocks we own.

A driver that I can use to hit my tee shots 250 yards out, not 100 yards up, 100 yards back down, and 50 yards out.

Inflation that stays under 2.5 percent. Unemployment that falls to less than 5.5 percent.

Gov. Schwarzenegger to improve on his pronunciation of the name of the state he runs.

An end to Internet spam without government intervention. It would mean not receiving all the body-part enlargement offers and never knowing the cheapest price on HGH or Viagra, but I could do without all that info.

A chance to buy a couple of French rifles from WWII. I understand they were dropped only once.

Enjoy this most special time of the year with family and friends. And give yourself time to step back and think about all that you have. Then anonymously help someone who isn't so fortunate.

And one more item on my wish list:

For all my readers to enjoy life and people as much as I do, and to have a person as understanding, patient and supportive as I have in Linda.

Politically incorrect or not, this is not a secular "happy holiday" greeting. I wish you a very Merry Christmas.