buy low, sell high

in an effort to not turn this into a blog that focuses on money, i just wanted to take one post to discuss my initial experiences trading in the stock market. all of this is new to me and i really have no clue what i am doing. so far so good. i have been slowly making money through the 4 stocks i purchased on friday and my net gains have been bouncing back and forth between 5 and 8 percent today, which i find more than acceptable. it feels a little weird discussing my purchases since i have this creeping worry that i should keep this info completely private, but since my readership is dan, phil and sometimes dave, i think i am safe. so the companies i am banking on are netflix, ge, cvs and google. all have been consitently going up excpet for google, which dropped after i purchased and then rebounded today. i have been also closely examining costco after alex sent me an arrrticle about the company.

while my initial success has been small and pretty luck-based, i have a few regrets. i probably should have shopped around to other trading companies to search for the lowest trade prices. my parents were kind of surprised about how much i was paying. also, i should have investigated the various purchase methods a little more. i just simply bout at market price, but could have looked into setting price points for purchases, especially for google which dropped like $10 per share at one point on friday. oh well, i could have just as easily missed out on the low opening price, so whatever.

i am also finding that the following of these stocks has developed into an easy obsession. it's in a constant state of flux when i am at work so i can keep hitting the refresh button so that as it rises i feel good and smart and when it goes down i feel like a failure. this definitely has a fantasy sports feel to it like when i am sitting by the computer on a sunday afternoon constantly checking on how many points i am beating laura by. add in the fact that this is more or less gambling...investing has filled a nice vice hole for me that could replace actual gambling.

i have some short term goals with this investment that may or may not be realistic, but i know that as long as i make a profit it will be better than if it were sitting in the bank right now. i will probably not discuss these investments again unless i do something drastic, my earnings blow up or something catastropic happens.