By Ben Carlson of A Wealth of Common Sense

As of 1991, a social worker named Shirley Sauerwein had never purchased a single share of stock in her life. “I didn’t understand it,” she told the Wall Street Journal in December of 1999.

Then she heard about a local company on the radio:

Then, while driving one day, she heard on the radio that a local company “had signed a contract with Russia that sounded interesting.” After calling for more information, she set up her first brokerage account and bought 100 shares at $12 each. Today, that company is MCI WorldCom Inc. Her original $1,200 now is worth $16,000, part of a mid-six-figure portfolio that includes Red Hat Inc., Yahoo! Inc., General Electric Co. and America Online Inc.

“I’ve doubled my money in two years,” says Ms. Sauerwein, who is 55 years old. “I’m staggered, aren’t you? It’s amazing. You can’t make that in social work.”

She eventually cut back on social work to become a full-time trader during the week with a stated goal of making $150,000 a year in annual trading profits to retire on…. Read More