We all know that there's more money sloshing around Ireland than ever before. What with the number of people in this country now counting share options as part of their remuneration packages, plus an assortment of Lotto millionaires, not to mention those lucky few who sold half of their gardens for the development of bijou apartment complexes, there doesn't seem to be anyone who hasn't made their fortune in the past couple of years. Go down to the pub and you're regaled with stories about people who bought city-centre studios for buttons a few years ago and have now sold them for the price of a large villa in Tuscany.
At the gym, someone is bound to mention that they've been headhunted for a spectacular job with an IT company at a salary (excluding bonuses) that leaves you as breathless as going the distance on the stepping machine.
And even people who aren't in the first-class carriage of the gravy train have at least noticed that the mortgage payments have come down again and that a holiday in the south of Spain isn't out of the question this year.
With interest rates at all-time lows, plus media frenzies every time the Dow or the Footsie makes new highs, people are beginning to take the plunge and invest some of their new-found wealth in equities even if they've shied away from the stock market in the past.
Since the advent of the Internet and on-line dealing, almost anyone can open an account and start trading. Playing the stock market has become so popular in the States that teenagers are now buying and selling on-line - if you think your son or daughter is doing nothing more than playing Tomb Raider or Mortal Kombat, think again!
Your precious offspring might, in fact, be investing their pocket money in Amazon.com or E-Bay in the hopes of turning it into enough to buy you out of house and home instead of eating you out of house and home like you're used to.
By the end of this year, according to reports in the Washington Post, more than 10 million Americans will be buying and selling stocks over the Net. This is going to account for a quarter of all retail trades, which means that the private investor will be a more dominant force in the market than ever before. Some of them have now made so much money that they've given up the day job to concentrate on trading.
Books like Poolside Tycoon by Malcolm Stacey are written for the novice investor who dreams of sitting by the pool with a Pina Colada in one hand and mobile phone in the other while monitoring share prices through designer sunglasses.
IT SOUNDS seductive but is it really possible to be a Poolside Tycoon? Can you earn enough money turning over your equity portfolio not to have to work again? Well, depends on what you think is work. Tapping a few buy-or-sell orders into the computer isn't particularly onerous, but what about the research you have to do before you tap in the order?
Have you read the FT, Barrons, BusinessWeek and the Wall Street Journal?
Did you watch CNN last night instead of Sky MovieMax? Some of the US private "day traders" are dealing simply on gut feeling and herd instinct - which is fine when the markets are trading up all the time. Making money in a down-move is usually much harder. I don't know anyone who earns a living by sitting under a palm tree and picking the next great stock out of the air. And if you're sitting under a palm tree, do you really want your palm-pilot to be with you? (This is why I am not a Poolside Tycoon. I love the beach and wouldn't dream of spoiling it by bringing the trappings of modern technology anywhere near it.)
In reality, the Poolside Tycoon can afford to pay someone else to look after the portfolio while she works on the all-over tan. Someone who comes into the office at 6.30 a.m. and leaves at 9 p.m. Someone who reads all of the research. Someone who really wants to be a Poolside Tycoon himself.
However, for those of you who've already amassed a fortune from the First Active flotation, your company options and the match 5 (well, you can't have everything) on the Lotto, and are itching to trade, remember the words of Rita Mae Brown. "Good judgment comes from experience; often experience comes from bad judgment."
For the rest of us, well, there's always the Telecom flotation. And a package holiday to the sun!