A year after I bought shares of Apple and Google, I am happy to announce that I still own them and that they've been paying dividends.  Well, not true dividends -- neither company offers dividends to shareholders.  However, Apple's stock gained over 115 percent since last October, and Google over 60 percent.  My only lamentation is that I wish I had bought shares of Amazon.com, which is also up substantially.  Thankful, the contrarian strategy of buying equity in concentration rather than diversifying worked well during the economic rebound.

 

What's next?  Real estate.  We're moving cash out of equities in anticipation of buying a property in the next year.  If you have any extra cash, you might consider the same strategy.  The best time to buy is when things look most bearish.