I have had some money in a savings account for the last year collecting slightly more than zero interest. A higher return is always desirable, but my cynical perception of most investment vehicles precluded my participation last year. In hindsight, it still looks like a good decision. The stock market barely increased in 2011 with the S&P being flat and the Dow growing by 5%.
The amount of money I have to invest is pretty much for entertainment purposes only. Any normal decent return will not be enough to change my lifestyle nor socio-economic status. My investment aspirations are limited to say the least.
Etrade had a deal where new accounts of $2000+ get $500 after 60 days. I am off to a roaring start with a 25% return in my first 60 days. M
y plan has been to invest in a product I am familiar with. The initial motivation to trade was to try to short the Groupon IPO. I have bought dozens of Groupon vouchers. A clever person with a webserver and a sales agents could reproduce what they have done. Shorting a stock turned out to have a higher learning curve that what I was willing to learn right away. I would have done well with that. Groupon opened at 26, swooned to 16 in 3 weeks and is bouncing around 20 now.
iGoogle news aggregation home page is my favorite website. I love my Amazon Prime service. Google has a huge market capitalization and is facing some stiff competition from Facebook, Bing and declining ad prices. I have a bias against paying $190/share for Amazon. AMZN might be worth it, but the few share I could afford would be lacking in entertainment value.
Today I took the plunge investing ARM Holdings at $26.91. ARM is a British company that designs the chips 75% of the worlds cell phone along with some software tools and a few other related products. ARM does not have a chip fab plant. I did not know the preceding until after making my investment in ARM. I hedged commitment by doing the transaction on a Friday night, it would not go through until early Monday morning. That was by design. It just so happened that I was struck by the idea to invest in ARM after reading umpteen hundred articles discussing cell phones with ARM chips and did it.
I don't have a smart phone and may not get one for months or years. I do plan on getting an Android tablet sometime in the first half of this year. The big stumbling block is price sensitivity, especially with the monthly data plans from the Telcos. US rates have been ridiculously higher than Europe and Asia for years. In the last couple of months, I have seen two startup companies offering (beta) unlimited data plans at $20/month. They depend upon tethering to mobile hotspots to minimize telco usage to get that low rate. That will work for me.
After nearly a week of being snowed in, I have picked up two new hobbies. Learning about ARM and researching the purchase of my own ARM powered product. Most likely I will simply go to Costco and buy whatever tablet they have on sale, but I won't know until I buy it!
I am grateful to have the resources to be able to invest in the stock market at 1 AM on a Saturday, for having made a decision and taking action, and looking forward to playing with my new tablet…someday soon.
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