Drew's Blog

I’m just as well off, I thought, following my own shortsighted, harebrained notion of how the market works as following their shortsighted, harebrained notion of how the market works.

So I tried it. I purchased a small number of shares in two companies whose market value had gone way, way down. My belief was that once the bailout money came, they’d either go way, way up or go out of business. If they went out of business, I’d be out a few hundred bucks. If they went way, way up, I’d keep them for a few decades, then buy myself a private island.

And what happened? They went up! A little!

Has this encouraged me to buy more stocks? Oh, dear God, no.

The reason, it turned out, that I buy lame-o mutual funds isn’t because they’re safe. It’s because they are boring. If they were actually to go up and down, like, say, individual stocks, I would check them on Google Finance until my eyeballs bled. Which is exactly what I do with my individual stocks.

To be clear, this is not enough money to buy a house. This is not enough money to buy a car. This is money that could buy a really nice dinner and a pair of shoes. And yet I now check my stocks before I check my e-mail. Or the weather. Or whether or not I have gotten out of bed. Never mind that my actual savings are invested in what seems to be a giant dollar bill bonfire corporation. I need to know if my stocks rose or declined a single penny and I need to know now.

It is, I’m pretty sure, a sickness.

I’ve thought about selling my shares, but that seems to violate my original buy-and-hold strategy, which I still think isn’t any dumber than giving a AAA bond rating to CDOs backed exclusively by sub-prime mortgages. So I’m naively hoping that I’ll eventually lose interest in the ups and downs of my shares, just as I do in video games, exercise, and higher education. And maybe, if I’m lucky, my plan will actually work and my little investment will be worth some real money by the time I retire.

I really hope so.

I’m counting on that private island.