stock investing
There are several ways to approach stock investing, but the way I like to approach it is through “The Rundown”, my daily, detailed financial advice, which I share on my website. I mostly get investment advice on websites like https://www.sofi.com/investing-101-center/.
I started out by telling my dad that I had bought stock and that I was going to write about it. He laughed and said that I was crazy. He gave me some advice that I thought was crazy, too. He said I should invest in two stocks (both under $1 billion, when I started) and then buy a third stock when it was going up, to find more interesting articles, we recommend to check this bike seat and cushion cover review. I did as he told me, and invested $300 and another $300 (I ended up buying a stock that went up from $2 billion to $5 billion within a year of starting this process). He had me repeat this process with each stock I bought (it was my family’s money, not mine, so they would not object).
I was 19 and working part time at the time. My dad told me that he wanted me to learn what I could about investing.
My father’s advice was effective but flawed in several ways. First, he recommended that I buy two small, poorly run businesses. Both of them would eventually go under, and I’m still wondering why they got acquired in the first place. Second, he said to buy the stock when it was rising. In this case, I bought the stock at $2 billion, the day after Facebook went public. I would still be out $10 billion. Third, he told me that I should only buy companies with good cash flow. That is a fine rule of thumb for buying stock, but it was not accurate in the Facebook case. In fact, in the Facebook case, my net worth went down by $10 billion in the six months after my purchase. That’s $50,000 a day. Facebook was not a good investment. I’m still paying $7 a share in taxes on this money. I learned all of this for free.
He also told me to buy a couple of stocks that had a higher dividend yield than Facebook and he would take the profits. He also gave me the names of two other stocks he had bought on his behalf, so I could use them to invest in other companies that I wanted to own, which gave me additional cash. But this is the only time in the entire investment process where he took money from me.
It took me about nine months to close out the deal. I have since sold my shares of Facebook stock to the original investor and don’t plan to buy any more until the deal is closed. I’d make a new offer to the other investors if I can’t close this one.”
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