Plunging back into the market

Well actually I guess it’s more like wading carefully back into the market like an old lady who doesn’t want to get her beauty shop hair wet. I don’t think I’ve ever posted about me and the stock market because I got out completely about the time we started Hags and I’ve been sitting on the sidelines since. I don’t know exactly why I got out when I did but I had a very bad feeling about the whole thing. Thank goodness.

I love the stock market. Have since I was a kid. I was probably the only kid in our Junior High that read the financial pages and tracked stock prices. Throughout the years I have paper traded and made and lost fortunes. I once bought Apple (on paper) when it had dived to only $8 per share only to watch it hit $117 about 18 months later. Sigh. That was kinda tough.

But I never had any cash to put my various theories to the test until a couple of years ago. That all came about thanks to Stace’s Mom. She had given Stace and I some cash for Christmas and I took my part and opened an online poker account. It wasn’t enough to open a brokerage account with and besides I was seriously hooked on playing poker online at the time. I didn’t feel a bit bad opening a poker account with it which I would have if I had opened an account with “family” money. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry if I lost the whole bank roll cause it was my personal cash and a gift besides. Anyway, I did lose some in the beginning because it was different playing for real cash instead of the free games I had been playing for months.

Eventually I made the adjustments needed and started winning a bit. Then I started winning a bit more. I was having a ball. Then the stupid republicans decided to make online poker illegal. Which while we’re… well… I’m on the subject really pisses me off. I remember them talking about all those poor pitiful people losing all their money so they had to make it illegal to gamble online to protect everybody from themselves. Bullshit. If they are so concerned about protecting people from themselves, why don’t they make it illegal for “preachers” to get on tv and beg for money to keep Jesus from calling them home. You know there are little old ladies all over this country sending money they cannot afford to sniveling televangelists every week. Make that illegal why don’t you?

And another thing, what about all those people who get hooked on QVC and the like and spend tons of money they don’t have buying cheap jewelery and chachkas? Why isn’t that illegal, hmmm? Why isn’t anyone protecting those people from themselves? Why is it ok to go to a casino and blow as much as you want but it’s somehow dangerous or immoral to play the same games online? It still pisses me off that they made it illegal. You can go jump off a bridge with a rubber band strapped to your feet and that’s just great, but when you get home you can’t pass a couple of hours sitting in on a 25 cent hold’em table cause you might lose $6.75 to the sharks. Idiots. Jerks. Assholes.

Anyway, the poker world was closing to me and I was seriously bummed about that. On the bright side, I had doubled my initial stake several times. Now I had more than enough cash to open a brokerage account online. So I did. And it has been all kinds of hella fun. Learning different methods of investing. Learning to really read charts. Reading books by old timers who made killings in various bull markets of the past… and surprisingly in the great bear markets, too. Taking my own little baby steps into the wading pool. I have enjoyed it immensely.

I was seriously bummed when I got so freaked out by the market last summer that I just sold all my shares and parked in cash. I admit that I missed the action. But I had no idea what the proper play was in that environment so thought it was best to stay out of the pool altogether. (Man I’m loving me some water imagery today, huh?)

So now I’ve been feeling like diving back in for the past few weeks… and today I did. Nothing huge just a couple of stocks I’d been watching. I have a very small account, but I doubt if I could love it more if it were hundreds of thousands of dollars… no wait… I would love it more then. But that’s not the point. The point is that I love my tiny little portfolio. Man it feels nice to be back in the game. Guess we’ll have to see if I’m still saying that in a couple of months, but for right now it’s all good. First day and one is up twenty cents while the other is up a couple of cents. I love this game.