Tuesday, January 16, 2007

It's a Skating Rink Outside/Investing


Our new home (a bit over one year now) came equiped with our first garage, and it's a huge two car jobber!! You gotta love it when you have ice storms, as there is no chipping out or shoveling out that needs to be done. One can just get in their car and go.


Not that I am going anywhere today. Luckily, Nan took over for her client's visits yesterday, and brought Nikki home with her through this. So I am off for today too to finish up business contracts, liability forms, make sales calls, and finish up the web update for http://www.mannerlymutts.com that is almost done. So it's a working day, but I am staying pretty much in my pjs. I am not venturing out anywhere today on car or on foot. Except I am going to need to chop out an area for the dogs so they can pee and poop by getting a footing on the ground. I didn't realize this morning, and everyone took a tumble out the front door, then had a hard time standing just to do their business. I had to rescue poor Jazz who has wobblers, and couldn't get her legs from being splayed. When I went to pick her up to bring her in, I figured out we were both going down hard if I did that, so we just took it slow to the door as I tried to support her backside. Poor girl, it just sucks getting old. Leon fell into the ice with his legs splayed, and then was afraid to come into the door afterward.


Investing, hate it. I do it though as I always make money in the end, but I am only so so at it. Worst past story is that I had a good chunk of Martha Stewart stock right before she went in the clinker. I had written it off, and put my bid in fidelity. The great thing about fidelity bids is that when a future event happens, and your busy, the transaction will automatically be done. However, 9am one morning, I realized that was a baaaaaad thing too. You see they had announced Martha's new apprentice show (even though it ended up being a dud, it was a very favorable view of what it would be then), and the stock soared. If I had left it as is, I would have made something like over $10.00 a share. I basically almost took a header trying to charge from the second floor of my house to the first floor, and still didn't manage to get to the computer fast enough!!! Heartwrenching, but I got over it.


Now it's easy to make money investing when you actually have the money to move around. Not so much when your money is tied up in other avenues, like payment of the mortgage of your new house near the beach. Well, the new house near the beach gives me more pleasure, so I am not bemoaning that. It's this Siruis stock that I have, and I totally believe in. It's been a rollercoaster ride though and I am so far on the unearned losses list (ie value down, and I am holding strong). There is nothing wrong with Siruis, but XM's shananigans were the first to bring the stock down low well below my buying price. Then I swear these people who write articles for investors play games so that they can rise or lower the stock at a whim. Every friggin time, just by reading some article, I can tell whether it's going to go up or down that day, and it has nothing to do with company performance just what this bloke says at so and so broker house. That is what is irritating, because that's what you have to use to hedge your bets then, not the actual accomplishments or assets of the company. Oh well, so the stock has raised 215.00 this morning alone, bringing my unearned loss up to 2000.00. Perhaps if some yahoo investment writer doesn't play the games, I a may be able to earn on the first 250 of those shares that I bought lower. And perhaps if the merger goes through, I win big time.


So the reason why it's easier if you have more liquid cash, is that you can distribute the fees over more shares and by more expensive stocks that are going to go up and down. It's easier to pull out of a stock like this and ride the wave to maximize your profits or minimize your loss. Instead, I feel like I will loose out if I sell, also if I try to ride the waves, I will only be increasing the fee ratio as I don't have that much liquidity to go for the stocks I would replace it with. I also have some preset prices in with fidelity (reminiscent of MSO) so I feel like I need to be checking in now that it's on the upswing, in case I need to cancel one out quickly (if something big goes down). But not doing investing, means not having my money grow at all, which is also not an attractive option to me.


No comments: