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Yeah jlee is prolly some stock broker 
Sam's car fund eh?
Didn't I see a doghouse with the letters smeared in poop, "Sam's car fund" on the way from school? >>
I'm not stock broker

... although alot of my relatives and friends are in that industry. I jsut do my research and usually have a gut feeling about stocks. Take Aura Systems (AURA.OB). Originally a Nasa contracted company, they went public after getting the boot during defense and space cutbacks. Initially invested like $5K into it. They dropped off Nasdaq. Although I lost some money during that time, they're roughly around $0.40/share right now. Their low was around $0.30. I bought in as well as my family at the $0.30 and sold at its high around $0.70. Easily doubled our money. At the low price we put in add'l $5K to offset our inital losses and hopefully get back some more. So needless to say I'm happy about it now.
With stocks its more of knowing what's gonna be a hit. You kind of have to play fortune teller. I don't believe in day trading (although my mom bought and sold MRV at the beginning and end of last week almost doubling). Right now everything's so volatile that watching the news the night before and just understanding basic trends, you should be able to make quite a bit. It gets stressful at times but you just have to hang in there and not worry about it. And you should never play with money that you cannot afford to lose. Just like gambling. I think that's why ppl stress out way too much. They put a big chunk of their savings or retirement into it and when they see that they've lost half of it, they start freaking out.
The large drops, or corrections I like to see them as, reduces the cost of overinflated stocks so that the regular person can begin to invest in those companies. The day of a big drop, i like to see as weeding out the weak. Especially after the markets reopened after the 9/11 situation.
Anyways, $10K is quite a big sum, if you really have this much to invest, well for that matter if you have any sum of money to invest, do your own research and ask yourself if that company fits. What I mean by that is don't buy into the hype. I didn't with the .coms and look at me, i still have my investments and they're all doing well right now despite the fact of recent events.
Right now hot items are pharms and bio-tech. Biotech was starting to become a hot seller even before the WTC incident in the wake of failing .coms.
good luck to all of you who are investing.
