JennetteFulda

  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
    • Blog
    • Archives
    • Travel and Adventure
    • Weight-Loss Blog Title Generator
  • Books
    • Books
    • Half-Assed: A Weight-loss Memoir
    • Chocolate & Vicodin: My Quest for Relief from the Headache that Wouldn’t Go Away
  • Timeline
  • Contact
    • Contact
    • Advertising

April 2, 2015 5 Comments

Playing the stock market

I don’t remember exactly why I opened a Sharebuilder account, but I know it involved free money. I think they offered to give me $50 if I opened an account, so I did. I’d never played the stock market before, unless you count opening an Individual Retirement Account (IRA), but that money is invested in an index fund so I’m not actively doing anything other than depositing money into it every month.

I learned about the stock market and bonds and IRAs and other financial voodoo like that in my early twenties after I graduated college with some credit card debt. And then my transmission broke. And then I had gallbladder surgery. So I was in debt for many, many years, signing up for new credit cards just so I could get nine months of no interest with my balance transfer, and slowly paying my debt down. That slow, suffocating horror made me decide I would like very much never to be in debt again. I did some reading and felt educated enough to handle my savings and my IRA, but I never dallied with day-trading or purchasing a specific stock by itself.

However, now that I had this free $50 I decided, what the heck, let’s play the stock market! It’d didn’t feel like real money, more like I was playing “Monopoly.” If I lost it all, well, I hadn’t really earned it in the first place. And if I made some money, wouldn’t that be fun?

Oh my God, y’all. It has been so much fun.

The best line chart ever

Remember that $50 I started out with? Over the past five years it has almost QUADRUPLED!! It topped out at $192 a few weeks ago. I am so good at playing the stock market! My only regret is that I did not dump my entire savings and IRA into this thing. What super-rocket stock did I buy, you might be asking? I bought Allergan. What the hell is that, you might be asking? They’re the manufacturers of Botox.

One of the most common pieces of advice given to writers is, “Write what you know.” Similarly, when playing the stock market you should buy what you know. I might not now how to properly pronounce “Allergan,” but I did know they were going to get FDA approval for Botox as a migraine treatment not too long after I made my purchase. Yes, my chronic headache might give me 99 problems, but bad stock tips ain’t one. The stock did go up as I predicted. And it continued to go up, and up again, and up again.

More recently a company call Actavis acquired Allergan, which drove the stock up to that peak point I have highlighted in my chart. I don’t know much about Actavis, and I don’t really care enough to educate myself about Actavis, not that they haven’t tried:

Big boring book

Thick boring book

One of the strange side effects of owning a stock is that you are occasionally sent big, fat, reports about the stock’s possible merger with another company. These days the phone book isn’t even as thick as this thing. I feel bad for whoever has to assemble this report. I have to wonder if they hid total nonsense passages in the middle as a test to see if anyone bothered reading it. I didn’t. I tossed it directly into the recycling bin.

It also came with an invitation to attend the stockholder’s meeting in California, which I imagine must be a totally boring event. But I do feel just a smidge special to have been invited to a stockholder’s meeting, because it sounds very grown-up and elite.

Anyway, I can’t decide if I should sell my stock now and get out, or stay with it and see where this roller coaster ride ends. Is this the peak? Or will it continue going up? Past results do not guarantee future performance! I was tempted to get out when it hit $100, but I didn’t want to bother figuring out how capital gains taxes were going to complicate my tax return. And like I said, it still feels Monopoly money to me. Only, I’ve never been as good at playing Monopoly as I am at playing the stock market.

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • More
  • Print
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pocket

Leave a Comment (5) Read more about: allegan, debt, finances, money, stock market, stocks

Jennette Fulda is the author of:

Chocolate & Vicodin: My Quest for Relief from the Headache that Wouldn't Go Away

"Smart, unflinchingly honest, and laugh-out-loud funny."

- Lisa Genova, New York Times best-selling author of Still Alice

  • Amazon
  • Barnes & Noble
  • Powell's
  • Indiebound
You may also like:
  • By land or by air? (Definitely not by sea)
  • If you use PayPal you should probably opt out of their forced arbitration clause by December 1
  • First class experience
  • My family didn’t exchange gifts this Christmas and it was awesome
Post navigation
Later: That time I missed out on a major national news event
Earlier: Better (six years) late than never: I finally review the Vita-Mix Super 5200 blender
Home: Main blog index

Comments

  1. Shauna says

    April 4, 2015 at 4:25 am

    I love that you applied “write what you know” to stocks, that’s genuis! 🙂

    Reply
  2. Shauna says

    April 4, 2015 at 4:25 am

    @Shauna – or even, genius!

    Reply
  3. PoppyK says

    April 10, 2015 at 11:57 am

    I own some Kraft stock and their headquarters are nearby so I decided to go to their annual meeting this year on May 5th. I figure it will probably boring but I’m hoping there might be snacks because, well…Kraft! It should be mildly interesting since I think they were just bought out by Heinz. So I guess that makes this a Heinz annual meeting. I had to request permission to go to the meeting and I’m not allowed to bring my phone or any sort of large purse/bakpack/attache. I figure I’ll probably wind up leaving after about an hour, but I wanted to see a little bit about what happens.

    Reply
  4. Sheryl says

    April 10, 2015 at 10:43 pm

    I would say, sell some of it and take your gains and invest them in another company and fund. That way, if it would go down, you got something out of if first, and if it keeps going up, then you can do the same thing again and take profits for some other investment. At least that’s my strategy.

    Reply
  5. JosephineTomato says

    April 17, 2015 at 2:55 pm

    I bought my nephews $100 in stock when they graduated from college. The first one, I bought YUM (Taco Bell, KFC, Wing Street, Pizza Hut) since I figured he could almost singlehandedly be responsible for any uptick given the amount of Taco Bell he eats. It has done very well in the past 4 years – quadrupled and also split shares. The second nephew, who seems to be a beer afficionado, I bought BREW (Craft Brew Alliance) that owns 4 different breweries. It also has almost doubled in the past two years. I think they have fun watching it and even though they know they aren’t going to get rich with it, it keeps them in the game.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I wrote some books

Chocolate & Vicodin: My Quest for Relief from the Headache that Wouldn’t Go AwayHalf-Assed: A weight-loss memoir

Follow Me

Jennette Fulda on Facebook

Recent Posts

  • That billionaire brat made me feel bad that Twitter is imploding
  • No one grows old on DVD or CD-ROM
  • Losing more than 100 pounds…again: Part 3 – The Differences
  • Losing more than 100 pounds…again: Part 2 – Losing Weight
  • Losing more than 100 pounds…again: Part 1 – Regaining Weight
440

Travel and Adventure

Weight-Loss Blog Title Generator

Most Popular Posts

  • Two weeks of Blue Apron: Six recipes, one blogger, and not enough bowls.
  • Remind me never to go off my meds again
  • Like the back of my hand
  • The Big Move in Retrospect: Everything good and the bad about moving from Indianapolis to Chapel Hill
  • It’s hard to type when you break your arm
  • My health insurance denial letters. Past or future?
  • Punta Cana, Dominican Republic: Day 1, Getting there is half the fun!
  • Not a picture I’ll be bragging about

Blog Archives

Search

Know thyself, quiz Monday

Jennette Fulda tells stories to the Internet about her life as a smartass, writer, chronic headache sufferer, (former?) weight-loss inspiration, and seemingly nice person (who is silently judging you). You can contact her if you promise to be nice.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for keyboards ruined by coffee spit-takes or forehead wrinkles caused by deep thought.

Follow Me

Blog Archives

Newsletter

One day I might actually e-mail something to my mailing list. If you want to be there for that moment, sign up below.

AS SEEN IN

  • The Washington Post
  • The Today Show
  • The New York Times
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • The Globe and Mail
  • Associated Press
  • Women's Health
  • Glamour
  • Shape Magazine
  • Runner's World
  • Health
  • The Early Show
  • MSNBC
Copyright © 2023 Jennette Fulda • All Rights Reserved • Privacy Policy • Site design by Makeworthy Media