Stocks like Porn

WWE Entertainment (WWE)

Bought 700 shares at $12.52 per share on 10/31

Sold 700 shares at $12.92 per share on 11/4

Net profit: $287

A week before this trade, Nino made a lot of money with Tesla by doing a pattern trade. He saw that Tesla went way down, and believed that it was gonna go up big time the very next day. So he bought 25 shares of the company and, sure enough, the stock went up by $20 per share. So I waited for the WWE stock to go down to a safe level where I felt comfortable buying. It’s important for me to have a vague idea of what a company is worth. When it goes down for some reason, whether it be a news report or an investor’s downgrade, I have to be able to gauge how people will react. Will people sell on the news, and then buy it back when the price goes below what is believed to be its true market value? Gauging investor confidence is ridiculously important. This was a pretty good lesson for me to learn.

With less than two months to go before I start trading, I’ve been trying to get my stock list ready, as well as knowing what levels are safe enough to buy each one. Nino said that the best way to choose stocks is to first see the ones that I’m either familiar with or ones that I use every day. So far, I have WWE, Iteris, Dreamworks Animation, Sirius Satellite Radio, and Command Security Corp. I really want to add Alibaba, but it’s a new stock and I’m very wary about buying stocks that don’t have at least a year’s worth of stock history. But, as I spent some time preparing my stock list this week, I realized that I have a much bigger problem than the list.

For something that I plan to invest tens of thousands of dollars into, I don’t spend a lot of time reviewing stocks and doing my research. It’s almost as if I don’t take it seriously enough. When I got into real estate, I immersed myself in it. Not the information like the terminologies or interest rates, but just the feeling of it all. Every day I woke up thinking about rents, repairs, profits, and losses… like I do now. I made it an obsession, and that’s what really forced me to pay attention to my mistakes and get better at it as time went on. That first year in 2008 was brutal and, if it weren’t for my obsession with it, I would have quit like so many others did. The drive to succeed at something can sometimes be more important than terminologies and stats.  When it comes to stocks, I don’t feel that drive just yet.

To bring this point home, I give the example of porn. I like porn. I watch it a lot. It’s on my tablet, my two laptops, my computer, even my phone. Anytime Nino mentions a random porn scene, I usually know exactly which scene he’s referring to. I looked up the top 100 porn stars just now, and I know about 80% of them from their movies. Now, imagine how much better it would be if I could treat stocks the same way. Instead of knowing when Lacey Duvalle needlessly gave herself breast implants, what if I know when a conglomerate is thinking of merging with a company on my stock list? Instead of knowing from what movie Lee Stone and Briana Banks accidentally break the bed during sex, what if I knew when the earnings reports of my stock list companies would be, as well as a vague indication of whether it’ll be good or bad news?

You see, I have to treat stocks like porn. I have to search for it like I search for new Rocco Siffredi or Brazzer videos because, unlike porn, keeping myself in the loop with stock information can make me money. I have to know it. I want to enjoy it. The feeling I get when I find an affordable property that can make a great return should be the same as when I find a good stock whose patterns fit my trading strategy. It’s all good, and treating my stock interests like my other hobbies will make my trading journey go much smoother.