Investing 102

[GregWeld]

A stock I've been picking away at is American International Group (AIG) the big insurance conglomerate that got a bailout from "us". The treasury sold it's stake (and made a few billion in profit) so is finally out of the picture. This stock was a wildly profitable dividend payer until it got too big for it's britches and got into trouble. Hopefully the management learned their lesson!

I'm not pitching it -- just discussing for investing 102 -- as this is the kind of HISTORY that I look for. It USE to be a good dividend payer. That was all suspended during the debacle it got itself into. And what I'm hoping for is that the GROWTH returns -- and they go back to dividend payments. If so - buying in "early" will get me a nice total return.

I'm not putting much into it because buying this kind of stuff is speculative, i.e., gambling. But it's a good educated guess over an IPO. I have history to go off.

In '08 this was a $1200+ stock paying a $4 per quarter dividend.... of course it's an entirely different company now. But I'd love to catch a double or maybe even a triple from here.