It's Monday, December 31st. Happy New Year's Eve. Welcome to Market Foolery. I'm Chris Hill. Just me in the studio.

I wanted to share a few thoughts to wrap up the year. This is not the usual show if you're new to this

podcast. As always feel free to skip this one. We're going to be back on

Wednesday, January 2nd because of course the market is closed on New Year's Day, but we're back on Wednesday

with business as usual in a brand new year. I wanted to share two things and the

first is about a stock. This is a stock that I've owned since I was a teenager,

only I didn't realize I owned it until just a short time ago.

My father was a doctor, he invested in the stock market. It wasn't really

anything we talked about a lot, but I know he was an investor. What I did not realize until recently is that when I was

14, 15 years old, somewhere around there, my dad spent around $50 to buy a few shares of a single company for me and he put

them in a custodial account.

And we may have had a conversation about that.

I honestly don't remember. If we did, I'm sure it went

in one ear and out the other because I was a teenage boy at the time. Teenage boy, not the most attentive creatures that occur in nature.

So I don't know if we talked about it or not.

My father died when I was 16 and those few shares of that stock just slipped through

the cracks of time.

After he died, my mother was taking care of everything.

She was managing the home and work and life without her husband and she

did a fantastic job with that. She is now 88 years old and my oldest brother is handling her investments and he contacted me recently

to say that he was going through some paperwork and he found this he found

this paper that indicated the existence of this custodial account with my name on it.

...