Damned if you do...

A few lessons in the madness of the stock market for me this morning.

I can't deny it -- the bitter side of me got a little bit bigger when I heard CanWest announce their plans to buy back their newspaper income trust for $9 a unit today.

I wrote earlier about my experiences with CanWest MediaWorks Income Fund.

I bought my units at the IPO price of $10, watched them sag below $8 and finally pulled the trigger and divested the lot at a little over $7.50 a unit -- only a few weeks before CanWest announced they were considering being gracious enough to buy back the assets for less than they sold them for.

Hopefully now I can pull the whole episode behind me, learn my lesson and move on.

After all, it could be worse. I could be a Royal Bank shareholder. Canada's largest bank posted quarterly earnings today, and despite the fact that profit was up, the stock got hammered. It's down nearly 3%.

Apparently 14% profit growth pales in comparison to TD's and BMO's numbers, posted earlier this week.

Talk about a tough act to follow. Some people are just really hard to please... :)