summary of what I have learned with my funny money

[Zaphod]

Vagabond MD wrote:

but took it in the shorts with Chipotle. All in good fun!

Click to expand...

You're the first to call it that!

[adventure]

I did this 10 years ago, and came out ahead (of $0). I decided I'd learned 2 things.

1. I could do this, and make money. No problem. I'd come out ahead of breaking even. Could I make enough? Don't know. Could I beat inflation or the indexes? Don't know. (data certainly suggests the clear answer...)

2. It'd take a lot of full time work, and I'd rather do something else with my time, life, and money.

3. Lots of risk too.

[The White Coat Investor]

I agree that researching, buying, and selling individual stocks is neither fun nor profitable. Keep careful track of your returns, including the value of your time, and you'll likely give it up within a few years. If you're going to spend time on something to increase your returns, choose something where you're more likely to make a difference, like a less efficient market such as real estate.

[Zaphod]

I dont even think its just that its difficult to make money trading individual stocks, its doable for some people obviously on a mathematical basis. Its just that it is so incredibly easy to get an excellent return on autopilot. It has to be one heck of a compelling situation to be able to compete against that.

[kingsnake]

Sucked at stock picking of course, luckily no major losses, but losses. I learned I'd rather just spend or save funny money rather than take flyers.

Discovered Bogleheads Guide to Investing in 2010...age 36...switched to Indexing and pulled out of individual stocks, active funds, etc. Just in time as salary jumped to high 6 figures at that point too. It was a perfect storm. Never looked back. Up like 8% annually since then, can sleep at night, have simple accounts, on pace to FIRE by 45.

[StarTrekDoc]

Our speculation account isn't about the math. It's about human behavior and guessing what it brings in the economic sense of a company.

Investing large sums over time is a recipe for disaster-- never bet against the house over time. That's the math.

The big success companies don't think about the math. I like to find that diamond in the rough and bet on its success. Been lucky recent years with likes of Amazon, visa and boa. But laid eggs with wamu and Nokia. Totally missed telsa and Facebook cause my coin flip went tails on those decision days ????

It is my equivalent of wild catting and sleucing and banking on what I believe our human behavior on those companies more than anything.

Eg noone e in their right mind would have invested in Amazon with their ratios, but I found myself buying and selling quite a lot on it from day one. So kept putting money where my habits were and worked out decently well