The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

My blog entry title is used not to discuss the fact that it's been weeks since I've posted anything, by just to acknowledge I'm well aware the days of posting every day are long gone. Well, that hasn't been the case for awhile, but you get my meaning. Anyway, onto my post!

The Stock Market.

I've actually declared openly that I felt the stock market was nothing more than glorified gambling. And unfortunately said gambling had a lot to do with the 2008 financial collapse that has made many a country left in a complete mess. But I'm going off on a tangent here.

You see, our government allowed us to invest up to $5,000 a year, in which any earnings made would be TAX FREE. NICE! This included the practice of buying and selling shares. So if it was any time to dabble in the markets, it was now (right?)!

I won't bore you with too many details, but bottom line is that I didn't really know what I was doing. My last major share purchase involved buying shares in SIRIUS radio. It was cheap ($1.47 a share) but volatile. It had traded at 12 cents or something like that a couple of years ago, still had massive debt, and went up and down like a...er...kid on a pogo stick. So to offset this "risky" stock, I decided to buy some blue-chip shares...Panasonic in this case. It was between 1/2 way of the 52 week high/low, and it wasn't too expensive (all in relative terms I suppose. $14.00 a share as compared to, say, Apple trading at $330 a share last time I checked). Might make a small but "safe" return.

Well, let me tell you what happened.

These moves negated the money I made buying and selling stock from companies like Ford and Microsoft. And you would think "Oh, that SIRIUS stock must have killed you!" Actually, it didn't. It helped me somewhat break even and not suffer even bigger losses. For you see, Panasonic nosedived to around $11 a share after the tsunami, earthquake, nuclear meltdown, Armageddon...whatever you want to call it. That's a pretty big loss. Now SIRIUS moved up to $1.80, and I figured since anything can go down without notice as Panasonic did, it might be best to sell now and not risk further losses. It didn't move from that $1.80 pricepoint for a couple of weeks, so maybe their small boom had ended.

Well that backfired on me.

Today it's trading at over $2.40, and it doesn't look like it's coming down anytime soon. Panasonic has steadily moved up to about $11.50 a share but that's still ways away from my $14.00 share price.

Are you lost, confused or extremely bored from this little diatribe? Now look, I invested money that won't hurt me too much if I lose it. And it's probably safe to guess that once Panasonic can get it's supply chains up and running again at normal levels, it should rebound back to where I bought the shares at and everything will be fine.

Or maybe not. This is glorified gambling, and any "logic" I used was, well, terrible and never worked out.

I should have just heeded my original advice.