The thing with writing about politics is that statistically you’ll piss off half the people all the time. So I thought I would go to something more controversial – writing about investments. Nothing gets people going as when they have an economical stake in something. If you’re right, you’re on top of the world. If you’re wrong, you’re a bum and no one listens to you. That’s one thing I love about the markets, it cuts out all the b.s. and boils it down to what matters and what doesn’t.
Speaking with Jonathan, there aren’t many blogs about investing. Ventureblog is a good one, but it’s not very actionable unless you are also a venture investor. There are plenty of “model” portfolios out there, but they’re not very actionable either unless you have a cool million or at least $100k to throw around. To me, it always looked like a cop out since the writer can always point to the high performers in the portfolio. They can say, “Well Joe, if you had invested in ABC like I said on 1/1/95, you’d be doing pretty well.” To which, someone might say “gee thanks a-hole, I invested in XYZ like you said on 1/1/96 and lost my shirt.” Diversifying is well and good, but you gotta have enough assets to diversify in the first place. Way back when, when I first started investing, I’ve always wondered what an average Joe like me can do with a few thousand bucks scraped together.
So let’s start a little experiment. I will personally invest $5,000 in the market and keep an online journal of what happens. It represents my entire liquid net worth, so it will definitely have my undivided attention versus some academic exercise without consequence. Who knows, it may be the shortest investment journal in history – ie blow it all on one trade and call it a day. Otherwise, it’ll be a good learning experience all around.
Let’s go get’em. Ding ding ding…
