Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Should the poor consider investing as a means to becoming rich? 
A cautionary tale:  About 25 years ago I decided that I should try my hand at investing in some technology companies.   I was in the computer biz but decided that I might suffer from myopia there, so I researched some medical startups.  And I did some reasonably good research, given the available resources (the Internet was quite primitive).  I narrowed things down to 4-5 companies, studying their technology plans, then researched their business plans and their personnel. In the end I picked a drug company.  Not only did it have a promising business plan, but it had as it's CEO a hotshot from some other company, and the BOD was populated buy big names from tech companies and the like.  AND the company had like $2 of cash for every $1 of outstanding share value, following their recent IPO. So I sold a bit of stock I had in my employer and bought like $3000 worth of this company. Then, taking the advice I'd seen several places, I forgot about it for about 6 months. When I went back to look their stock value had dropped a little, and the cash reserves were down about 20%.  I wasn't too worried.  6 months later the cash was down 50%.  Worrying a little.  After I'd had the stock for about 2 years the stock price was about 10% of what I'd paid.  Hardly worth selling, so I hung on for awhile longer. The company was eventually sold to some other company and I got maybe $50 in stock in the new company.