Four Fantastically Cheap Investing Tips!

4. Befriend A Mentally Disturbed Mathematical Genius

Although he lies awake at night writhing from the pain and insomnia of incessant equations and unsolved problems bequeathed by long-dead, equally tortured mathematicians, this poor soul can be your gateway to riches! All you have to do is support his failing bodily functions by coming by twice a day to remind him to eat and bathe in between pondering the great enigmas of numerology and you will have gained his trust enough to tell him you want to try something. Then he will let you lay out all the stock pages from the last year, glued to the walls, ceiling and floor of his apartment, at which point connections and correlations will erupt like chain lightning in his delusional, but brilliant brain. Remember to hire someone else to feed him when you are rich.

3. Learn How To Interpret The Federal Reserve's Cryptic Body Language

While Ben Bernanke is careful to keep his lips sealed lest the markets be upset by some gaffe, his hips, like Shakira's, don't lie. Widely expected to lower rates this week, his body language is telling a different story. It is saying "You. American investors. You think you're all that but you are not. I'm not going to bail you out of this one, you irrationally exuberant cads. I'm going to punish you by raising interest rates and nipping inflation in the bud. You will thank me later. Hold me." Start shorting bonds and t-bills at the current rate.

2. Incorporate Yourself Under A Chinese Name

Everyone knows China is going to be growing at roughly twice the rate of America for the next few decades. What most Americans do not know, however, is anything about China. So start making some poisonous but brightly colored children's food and sand-bag diapers, because in Idaho, if it's not tater-based, then they're fucking stumped. While you're at it, just go ahead and just name your company the Kung Fu Manchu Ding Dong Huey Looey N. Dooey Bruce Lee Manufacturing Company. Otherwise people won't know it's Chinese.

1. Squatters' Rights

When it comes to a return on capital, nothing beats the return on zero. Enshrined in the forgotten back pages of American law, dating back to the days of the Frontier, anyplace that's not currently used, maintained, wanted, or healthy can be yours provided you move there and improve it. Patience and the willingness to live somewhere other humans naturally flee is all that's needed to start your real-estate empire from scratch. Scratch, by the way, is what squatters call the dish they make out of paint-flakes, rainwater, and cockroaches. You'll be making a lot of scratch. We recommend trying to sell some scratch to less-enterprising squatters, unless they are dead, in which case you may eat them, because that will taste and sell better than scratch.