I am worried.

I am worried about the Chinese yuan, the euro, inflation, deflation, stagflation, whether we can blame those evil hedge funds for the price of coffee (and why the second cup costs just as much as the first cup at Second Cup), the price of oil, the prospects for DRVW (Nasdaq, 1.2 cents US) holding over the one-cent plateau, gold, the CNBC "housing bubble," Uncle Al Greenspan's next move on interest rates, Maria Bartiromo's next hairstyle, Google (Nasdaq:GOOG), income trusts, why stock chatrooms have become day-care centres with pictures of choo-choo trains, who gets canned next at the Alberta Securities Commission and whether the proverbial summer rally is once again a figment of the wild imaginations of some desperate money managers.

Which of course makes me a typical market watcher.

Yes, Wall Street is holding me by the scruff of my neck and won't let go. It takes great delight in force-feeding me useless information. I am a prisoner of CNBC and ROB-TV. My bedtime story is from Barron's or Investor's Business Daily. I can't sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, screaming out delisted ticker symbols.

So it seems the time is ripe to leap off that treadmill and adopt a fresh perspective. A Grade 7 perspective.

Sometimes, we need to be reminded that investing is not rocket science and that, yes, even seventh-graders can beat the street as Peter Lynch, the legendary Wall Street fund manager, would attest.

In 1993, Lynch authored Beating the Street, the follow-up to his original book, One Up On Wall Street. To help me get off the treadmill, I have dusted off this old classic and reread the first chapter: The Miracle of St. Agnes.

In this chapter, Lynch, the one-time superstar manager of the Fidelity Magellan fund, tells the extraordinary story of how a class of seventh-graders, oblivious to the worrisome noise in the market, kicked the living daylights out of the pros on Wall Street.

In 1990, the seventh-graders at St. Agnes School in Arlington, Mass., a suburb of Boston, tested their stock-picking prowess in a school project by picking 14 stocks. Their portfolio, created with a healthy dose of kid common sense with the guidance of teacher Joan Morrissey, returned 69.6 per cent in a two-year span in which the Standard & Poors 500 index was up 26.1 per cent.

According to Lynch, the mini-portfolio managers from St. Agnes, who were rewarded with a free breakfast with their teacher and a movie for their painstaking research, outperformed 99 per cent of all equity mutual funds managed by the big-money portfolio managers.

One of the primary themes of the St. Agnes class's investment strategy - of course, they didn't actually invest any money - was picking companies they knew about and products or services to which they could relate. Before they could put a stock into their portfolio, they had to explain what the company did.

Many of the students had shopped at the Gap, which was the biggest winner in the portfolio with a two'-year return of 320.3 per cent. Among the other big winners were Nike (+178.5 per cent), Wal-Mart (+164.7 per cent), PepsiCo (+63.8 per cent), Topps (+55.7 per cent) and Pentech International (+53.1 per cent).

Pentech made the marker pens the St. Agnes class used in highlighting their selections. The class sent Lynch a Pentech pen and tipped him on the stock. Yet, Lynch confesses in the book that he "neglected to act on it (the tip).”

In short order after he'd received the lead, Pentech stock nearly doubled.

The St. Agnes portfolio achieved its knockout performance even with three losers, including shoe manufacturer L.A. Gear, which was down 64.3 per cent. However, the class still managed to put the boots to Wall Street with the sneaker manufacturing segment of their portfolio, thanks to Nike's impressive sprint.

No doubt, Lady Luck had a hand in the St. Agnes class's success. Yet, they did pick their stocks based on earnings and revenue growth - and some struggling fund managers could learn a thing or two from their simplified investing style.

Some fund managers actually do put themselves into the sneakers of school kids in making investment decisions.

For example, in early February, Mavrix Fund Management CEO Mal Spooner made West 49, a chain of stores that caters to teenage skateboards, snowboarders and surfers, one of his top picks in the Edge's Pro's 3 Stars column after noticing that the store was becoming a cool place for youngsters who were coming into the store with their credit cards (i.e.

parents' cards).

Since Spooner identified this little-known gem that hadn't registered on Bay Street's radar screen to Edge readers, shares in West 49 (TSX:WXX) have soared by 33.3 per cent.

Only time will tell if a new 26-acre light industrial business park will do what the Town of Irricana wants.

The community is hoping the park will help boost the local live-and-work population of a community that currently bids a daily good-bye to 87 per cent of its adult population.

According to the town's last census, that's the number of residents who leave Irricana every day to commute to jobs, mostly in the nearby cities of Airdrie and Calgary, says Irricana realtor Larry Martin.

Martin, also a member of the town's economic development committee, feels pretty good about the new business park's long-term impact on the town's economic stability. And why not?

Located near the junction of Highway 9 and 567, Irricana is 18 minutes east of Airdrie and about 35 minutes from Calgary. But the town's first true business park holds a trump card for new and potential residents who may want to hang up a shingle in Irricana, which has no business tax. And just last week, the community officially changed its municipal status from village to town.

Irricana's last census in 2001 pegged the population at 1,043 people, and town economic development officer Brenda Burrows expects that to rise when this year's census results are tallied - and to continue to rise as the business park develops.

Like other communities within easy commuting distance of Alberta's two largest cities, lower land prices and the chance to live in a small-town community means residential housing in Irricana is pretty much booming, at least in terms of demand.

Supply is another thing, admits Martin, who says resale houses in Irricana don't spend much time on the public market. These days, a 1,100- to 1,200-sq.-ft. new home with a double-car garage on a 50-plus-foot lot hits the Irricana market somewhere around $180,000.

"For resale, we're averaging somewhere around $140,000 to $150,000" for a similar-sized home, he says.

To boost supply, development has started in two new residential subdivisions. One will hold 10 duplexes and four single-family homes. The other has 14 new single-family lots.

The fully serviced lots sell for $30,000, less than half of a bare lot price in a suburban Calgary neighbourhood.

Farther north, land and housing prices are the biggest attraction in the community of Morinville, 10 minutes from the amenity-packed city of St. Albert. Realtor Brent Melville says Morinville is an especially hot market for first-time buyers.

It's also fairly price-conscious, says Melville. Although new estate homes are being built in Morinville, resale homes priced at more than $200,000 were a tough sell until recent months. To date, the resale MLS record for that community of about 6,300 people stands at $277,000.

Most buyers in the Morinville market want a home in the $180,000 to $200,000 range, says Melville. In early June, a 25-year-old bungalow with 1,100 sq. ft. of developed space, a big yard and a detached garage would likely hit that market at approximately $175,000.

Again, commuters drive the residential property market. Melville, a two-term town councillor who didn't run last fall, says about 68 per cent of Morinville's adult residents commute to jobs in St. Albert or Edmonton.

The company recently announced quarterly earnings of $18.9 million (through April 30), a 30.1-per-cent increase from the same period a year ago, and, with its market recently hurdling the key $100-million plateau, it may now start to get some attention from Bay Street.

So if you're one of the market's flustered worrywarts, feeling overwhelmed and confused by the market's mountain of worries, it may be time to clear your head, take a step back and gain a youthful perspective. Heck, you could do a lot worse than go to school on your seventh-grader.

* SAGE WORDS: "Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon."

- Peter Lynch, in Beating the Street.

HOT STOCK: MIRAMAR MINING CORP.
MAE:TSX $1.30
Up 25 cents (+23.8%) on 3,481,310 shares(based on weekly results through June 10 for Canadian stocks over $1)
Lately, gold stocks have had all the appeal of a geologist with a salt shaker. With the market shrugging off most good news in the gold sector, Miramar roused the gold bugs with some intriguing drilling results from its Hope Bay property in Nunavut. The burning question, of course, is whether stock in the North Vancouver company can sustain its upward action with gold stocks in a funk.

COLD STOCK: Western Forest Products Inc.

WEF:TSX $3.95
Down $1.35 (-25.5%) on 50,625 shares (based on weekly results through June 10 for Canadian stocks over $1)
First, the bad news. Western Forest, faced with a cash crunch, announced the Duncan, B.C.-based company is temporarily closing sawmills and curtailing operations, laying off workers and postponing interest payments on a US-denominated bond. Now, the good news. There were no spelling mistakes in the press release.

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)