I have been receiving emails from Nigeria since 1998. Every email claim that I am supposed to inherit few million dollars. These emails keep popping up even though I mark each and every one of them as spam in my yahoo account. Nigerian scammers keep sending these emails because people fall for them. The scammers are optimistic that even if they get 0.0005% response, they would easily make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I am sure that most of you have received the nigerian scam email. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you say “I am interested” to these scammers?

John Rempel, Leamington, Canada did just that. He quit his truck driving job and searched for $12.8 million bounty that never existed. He lost the total of $150,000 to the Nigerian scammers. You can read the complete story here.

Scammers play mind game. If you read the story of John Rempel, you will know how easily he was manipulated. Once the prey is caught in the net thrown by scammers, the prey conditions its mind to believe the hunters. All scammers succeed by sweet talk. John Rempel was naive and strongly believed that some stranger really left $12.8 million for him. I am surprised that even his family played along and lost all the money.

If you take a look at the action of savvy investors like Prem Watsa, this may be the right time to get back in the market. Prem Watsa was born in Hyderabad, India. He is the CEO of Fairfax financial holdings based in Toronto, Ontario. He is a graduate of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology with a degree in Chemical Engineering and a holder of an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business of the University of Western Ontario. He correctly predicted the current credit crisis one year ago. In November 2007, he said that global credit squeeze was in its early days. He moved bulk of his investment portfolio to safe government bonds. He made bet against CDO like instruments that are the basic reason for global credit crisis that bankrupted many financial institutions all over the world.

His bet succeeded and made him handsome returns. Recently, he removed hedges on equity portfolio investments which typically mean that he thinks the worst is over. It appears that he is not afraid of losing money on the investments anymore. He might also think that the stock prices can’t fall too much below the current level. Whatever it is, it’s good to see an optimistic person that yield wide influence in the finance community. Hopefully this gesture would encourage other money managers to invest more in the market.

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