Time And Tide

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose. Lyndon B.Johnson

Friday, January 09, 2004

Give me a suit and a briefcase

Apparently I'm having a bit of difficulty keeping up with all my jobs so far this year. I can't manage to catch up with laundry and it's been a week since I last blogged. Days since I even read a blog (I just finished catching up). Now I feel old because everyone (except maybe Cate) is younger than me. I was graduating high school when they were just getting there.

Hardly fair.

I have spent the week looking at houses, trying to keep up with the house I don't want, but have, school, and the stock market. That's my latest hobby. It turns out that I've got a knack for stock picking and I'm having great fun with it. In May of last year, hubby decided to give me 500.00 to pick a stock with. I'm not sure what prompted it but I think he was just tired of my eyes glazing over when he'd talk about stocks like they do when he talks about football - the only two things that really interest him besides the restaurant. Anyway, he gives me the moolah and tells me to go off and make money. Six weeks later I make my stock pick and buy 75 shares of what I hoped was going to be my money maker. It closed fairly recently at 12.50 (up from the 6.45 I paid). Over the last several months I've picked several of the stocks we've purchased and we've made money in a big kind of way on them - in the way of gains...not actual big money...you have to put big money in to get big money out. Still, we're making money. On average, we're up 60% on my picks. The small fortune we could have made if he'd invested in the penny stocks I liked very much and marked for him to look over when they were 2.75 and 2.89 in August and both closed at over 12.00 today...well, that one will never be ours. There are several other of those small fortunes out there that I've picked and he's missed.

It's a travesty.

So for Christmas he gave me a book on day trading and told me to settle on an online broker. He's turning me loose. With money and no supervision. He seems confident in me. I like that.

See, Doug is an invester. A buy and hold kind of guy. I'm of the day trader mentality. I say take the money and run.

The good news is I'm told I'll never be ignored again (until I end up picking the big bomb, I'm sure) and we're still up 12 bucks on one and double on another and have two waiting to break out of the gate in a big kind of way come quarterly report days at the end of the month.

So that's the story of me, the stock market junkie, sneaking peeks at price fluctuations between math and science, loads of laundry, and house shopping. No luck yet on the home front but there are a few more places to look and one that I dearly love but that requires a lot of work (which I'm ok with, you know). We just have to make sure we don't find one that's ready to move in to that would be just as suitable.

Life's hectic, I'm not sleeping well, and I keep falling more behind. But I'm having fun, enjoying the house hunting (except for that one exceptional house I want and can't have) and we have homegrown popcorn from my FIL's garden and Buffy on DVD. Life's pretty good.

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