In light of me losing 20% of my cash investment in stocks as a newbie investor, I’d like to mention that there is a difference between intuition and whim.
Intuition told me to not put my money in hippie-planet-love stuff like Oatly and Allbirds. Whim told me to be cool and buy stock in a responsible and sustainable company. I tried to make their mission statements fit to my idea of what the ingredients for an upward trajectory would be. Oatly had a cool new ad and was a preferred vendor for Starbucks. Allbirds had cool shoes, and I wanted to see what making an IPO purchase would yield. Not good enough!
Intuition told me to put my money on solid ground with companies like Unilever and AliBaba. Whim said Nintendo, NTDOY, was cool.
Intuition said to not put money into Crypto. HA! I HAD to! You just never know, so crypto on! It’s coooo-elll as heck the way a few words from Elon Musk can send it soaring. Or not.
This is my own self-led crash-course to newbie investing in stocks, and I’m learning for sure.
So, my next lesson is supposed to me just on practice mode buying low and selling high with my micro-holdings in Ethereum and Dogecoin. Problem is, my other fun tickets are stuck waiting for that dang Oatly and Allbirds to improve, as well as my DOGE and ETH. I’ve been obsessively watching this. My apple weekly screentime report is way up, thanks to Robinhood.
Did you know that at the grocery store, Oatly is so much more expensive that the other Oat milk brands, by a dollar or more, that I don’t even buy this product which I own stock in. Oatly, what makes you so fricking hot that you’re a dollar more?
This is my sad story from last week:
My $300 went down to $235!!!! I’m glad I was able to set aside $300, but I’m also glad it wasn’t $300,000.
My OTLY investment went down 51% from 15.75/share to $7.68.
BIRD -8% from $15/share to $13.72.
ZM -20% from $216.01/share to $171.74.
DOGE -35% from $0.20/share to $0.13.
ETH -23% from $3813.90/share to $2942.26.
I could take a class from any one of dozens of investing influencers, at a hefty price, but I just put all the chips I can get my hands on (which I borrowed!!!) on GRAD SCHOOL. MBA starts Jan 31! My self-led investing crash course will continue via Robinhood, because I don’t think ECON and STATS will cover this carnival magic, white-collar betting. Maybe next semester.
I watched in disbelief and kind of a macabre fascination, as my investment money flew out the window with COVID, weather, the Fed talking about raising rates a few times through 2022, everyone’s economic forecast for inflation and maybe even recession. It seems many, many writers wants to be the one who can later say, “I told you doom was coming,” so I actually feel better about the future if I remember that the egos of talking heads demand they have the scoop on worst case scenarios. I understand it would be too boring to write about how it will just get kind of bad but to hang in there! Not blockbuster material, but it’s kind of what we need.
Hang in there!
(Oh wow, as of publishing this, I’m up to $248.)
Kate Murray 