Meet Dow Jones

You want to join the neighborhood fat cats who invested their spare change in the stock market and are making enough now to buy all the yarn balls and catnip in Maine — on paper, anyway. But how do you get started?

You could ask your brother-in-law, who knows everything. You could ask your barber, but if he’s so smart how come he’s not rich? Maybe you could ask the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arthur Levitt Jr. It just so happens that he will be in Bangor June 30 to take some of the mystery out of stocks and mutual funds.

The fact that many people would not know a junk bond from a no-load fund hasn’t kept them trying to capitalize on the stock market. About 40 percent of Americans are risking a little or a lot of their financial futures through 401(k) plans, mutual funds or pension stock in a market that has grown spectacularly during the last three years.

How well they do may depend largely on the skill of portfolio managers who break down the market into easily understandable investment strategies: low risk, low yield; high risk, high yield — maybe. It is that uncertainty that keeps many people on the sidelines or in super-safe investments. One thing that is certain about the market is that the rich love it. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own nearly half of all stock; the bottom 80 percent own only 3 percent.

Even the chairmain of the SEC can’t guarantee you’ll get into the 1 percent crowd, but he could offer some principles of investing that could get you started on fat-cathood.

He will be joined by Sen. Susan Collins and Christine A. Bruenn, the securities administrator of the Maine Securities Division, at an Investors’ Town Meeting starting at 3 p.m. Tuesday at Husson College. Before her election to the Senate, Sen. Collins most recently was executive director of Husson’s Family Business Center and regional director of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and will talk at the town meeting about investment issues before Congress. The NEWS is the media sponsor for the event, which also includes evening seminars on savings, mutual funds, selecting stocks and an introduction to financial planning.

For more information or to reserve a seat at the town meeting, call 877-624-8551. Remember: Buy low, sell high.