Hello inter-friends! Let me introduce myself: My name is Chris. I'm a 20-something systems engineer from Charleston, SC. Allow me to preface this entire shenanigan by stating that I am not independently wealthy. In fact I'm not even dependently wealthy. I'm not wealthy at all. I am just an average guy. I work hard to make a living, live in a middle class apartment and shop at WalMart and Target.
About 8 years ago I decided to take it upon myself to learn how to invest intelligently. My goal at the time, which is the goal of all new investors (you're lying to yourself if you say it's not), was to become filthy rich like Warren Buffett, retire before my 30th birthday, own a mansion on the beach, and decide on a daily basis which Ferrari or Lamborghini I wanted to drive and which supermodel girlfriend I'd be taking out to lunch at the five-star restaurant I'd purchased the night before...with cash. Well, that didn't happen.
Something else did happen though. I became addicted to the game. I slowly fell under the spell of the market, becoming more and more obsessed with trying to understand how it all works. To give a little background, no one in my family has ever taught me anything about investing or money management, other than my parents instilling in me the philosophy that it's always a good idea to have some money saved up in case you need it someday. I didn't even know what a 401K was until I was about 18, and even then I had no clue why anyone would want to have one or what implications it had for my future. One day though, something clicked. I just wanted to know. And so I read.
I read everything I could find. I read newspapers, blogs, internet news, investment articles, whitepapers, research papers, even dissertations. I watched movies. I went to seminars. I listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I talked to people who traded the markets for a living, and people who worked as financial planners providing advice to others. I met with real estate agents and asked them questions. At one point while visiting a friend in New York City, I even met a homeless man who used to be a millionaire Wall Street broker, but sadly had made some very bad investment decisions and lost everything, including his mind. Anything I could find that had anything to do with the stock market, understanding business; picking, buying and selling stocks; analyzing the financials of a company, Wall Street, buying and selling real estate, reading charts, you name it, I was involved somehow.
Over the years as I became more and more obsessed with learning what made all these things tick, I also found that I loved teaching others the things that I'd learned and that I loved the idea of personally giving people the knowledge and power they needed to take control of their financial future. Listen: I'm a firm believer in the idea that if you really want to understand something, you must teach it to someone else. You must field their questions and respond to their criticism. And you'll be wrong. Someone will always teach you something new or force you to admit to yourself that you don't know everything about the subject and that you need to do a little more research to fully understand it. Those are the two fundamental reasons I've created this blog. First, to show my readers that it really isn't all that hard. You can understand the stock market, investment vehicles, and all that complicated stuff they talk about on the news. You can understand how it affects you and how you can use it to become financially independent. And you can do it without becoming a hermit living in a library and while still being able to shower daily and shave your legs (if you're a girl...or a guy if you're into that sorta thing). Second, to force myself to continue to learn by responding to your comments, criticism, questions, and anything else you can throw at me (including food, I love food).
Of course, there are hundreds of these blogs out there. You can read any of them, including mine. That's why this is Just Another Investing Blog. So without further ado, I bring you my collection of both coherent and incoherent ramblings on all things investing.
In reading this post about yourself and investing is like me looking back in time to when I was about your age in community college. I had about the same insatiable desire and even went as far as having a meeting for an investment club from my Accounting I class. Because of my drive for knowledge even before coming to RIT I already had a broad general background of investing and vaguely knew about options and futures. Subsequently, this allowed me to defeat my entire Intermediate Investments class in a financial market simulator, having more profit than the next five persons below me combined. Ultimately, it led to my days trading equities with alumni after college which was altogether different and I learned by losing but who knows where you'll end up? Even though I started where you are now, I’ve moved onto more advanced and technical aspects of the financial markets. Subjects such as Behavioral Finance, statistical inference of financial data, algorithms, price structuring, etc. I’ve even considered at times applying for graduate school to take Financial Engineering. All in all, my single best piece of advice is: “manage your risks properly and profits will result, not the opposite.”
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