Wall Street, Here We Come!

Today is a history-making day. Today, we bought our very first stock, funded soley on earnings from our other holdings. This is significant. It means that our little money-making machines have made enough money to birth their very own money-making machine, with no deposit from us.

We’d hoped this would happen. We dreamed about it. It means that maybe we have figured out a winning strategy.

I am very proud of us and I’m going to shamelessly brag for a moment. If you don’t wish to hear, then I would suggest that you stop reading. Now.

Since we purchased our first holdings in March, we have averaged 32% returns. What does that mean? That means that for every $1,000 we have invested, we have made $320. It doesn’t sound like much at first. But imagine that you have $5,000. Your profit for the year would then be $1,600 (or $133/month). Add that $1,600 to your original $5,000, and you have $6,600. That $6,600 can now make you $2,112 (or $176/month). Now you have a grand total of $8,712. Keep this train going, and if you average 32% annual returns for 25 years, your initial $5,000 will grow into over 5 MILLION DOLLARS. Imagine now how much you could have if you added even just $100 of your own money every month to your original $5,000!

Our pie-in-the-sky goal is to average 40% annual returns, with the more realistic dream of coming in a little over 20% annually. We do this by carefully selecting under-valued stocks and investing the exact same amount into each stock. It makes it easier to monitor this way. We also keep a “buffer” amount available for each stock, so we can buy more if the stock dips by a certain percentage. This tactic is known as “dollar cost averaging” and it brings down your cost of the stock, so it’s not such a steep climb back up. It also prevents us from losing 100% of our investment money, should something catastrophic happen, like a bankruptcy. We have rules that help us avoid this scenario, too. The nice thing about dollar cost averaging is that we have stopped panicking when a stock drops.

Our goal for each stock is to sell when it hits 40% returns. We give each stock 90 days in which to achieve this goal. If at the end of 90 days, the stock is down, or it has not gained more than 10%, then we hold onto it and re-set the 90 day window. More often than not, our stocks have been hitting 40% within 60 days of purchase. We felt it important to put a cap on our returns, so we don’t sit too long at the poker table and lose our winnings before we realize them (I had a tendancy to want to wait and see how high it could go. Bad idea.).

Then, we take our original amount we invested and use it to purchase a new stock. The proceeds from the sale go into a holding account, where they sit until we have turned enough profit to buy a new stock. This is how we started out with 6 money-making machines, and now, today, we have 7. I am happy to announce that we are in the TOP 20% of the Motley Fool CAPS players. Yeah, baby, we are All Stars! We are beating over 7,000 other players, by using our strategy. In addition, we are beating the market.

And the best part? All it takes is a little bit of research and daily monitoring. No second job required, no business degree mandatory. No commission to a Wall Street broker. No one deciding what is best for your money (granted, all the sucess and all the failure can now be pinned on you – are you up for the challenge?). And, if we wanted, we don’t ever have to put in another dime of our own, hard-earned money. Success, however, is the best motivator of all, because now I’m itching to add to the pile.

Okay, shameless bragging session is over.

Random Thoughts

My manager paid me a high compliment yesterday. She said if a posting comes up, she hopes I would apply for it. You can't get much better than that. I have another year left on my contract and I'm hoping I'll get flipped.

Never work for a Command Sergeant Major when you are a normally sensitive person. I had a "come-to-Jesus" talk with him about his behavior towards me since he's come back from military leave. Luckily, I didn't get fired. Instead I got praised for the size of my balls. That was the last thing I expected.

Stefan and I and Dave and Sam are going to the State Fair this Sunday. The girls are really excited about going on the Ferris Wheel. Hello romance!!

We're hanging out Friday evening with Brett, and then hanging out with John, Michelle and Eryk on Saturday. Michelle and Eryk are in the process of selling their house. I wish them much luck - much more than we had!

Stefan and I are kicking around the idea of getting a gun permit. There's a shooting range down in Colonial Heights, and Cubby isn't turning into the kind of watchdog we were initially hoping for. He's great for drowning small animals with his saliva, but I don't think that will work very well against burglars. Actually, he's asleep right now - the perfect time to spend quality time with the big, slobbery polar bear.

The End of Summer

Well, summer is over according to the calendar, but the weather is still warm. There's not a whole lot of new stuff to report, but here's a little something...

Cubby is now larger than Yoda in height and length, but not in weight. He's still pretty skinny, yet his paws are noticeably larger than Yoda's. He's turning into a good dog. He is curious and mostly obedient, and has calmed down quite a bit since we decided to keep Yoda and Cubby outside at night. Perry's crush on Cubby has subsequently cooled off, as well.

Stefan and I had the opportunity to go to a prom this past weekend for people who missed theirs in high school. That was a lot of fun. We have often said to one another that we wished we'd met each other earlier in life. If we had, we would have gone to Prom together. Stefan looked so handsome in his tuxedo and we took a bunch of pictures. We got a photo taken for $5 (just like at a real prom), but the photo is pretty terrible. Bad lighting. We look orange, and it's out of focus. I kind of wish we could have given the digital camera to someone else so they could have taken a couple of photos of us together. Oh, well.

I'm in the process of organizing all our digital photos so I can start scrap-booking, now that football is starting up. Go Pats!

The State Fair is coming up in a few weeks. I'm looking forward to going to the fair with my hunny and eating fried dough and going on the ferris wheel. I hope we get stuck at the top. I'm such a sap for all those little romantic moments.

Well, that's all for now.

Corporate Musings (aka Holly has too much time on her hands)

It always amazes me when I hear of companies who are looking for candidates, and they describe themselves as a “fast-paced environment.” Every company I’ve ever worked for who has made this claim seems to move at a snail’s pace. If a snail can out-run a fast-paced environment, what would it be like to work in a slow-paced environment? I am beginning to think that the pace of the environment relies heavily upon the employees, and what state of mental zombiness they are in. The older we get, the more likely we are to be mental zombies for longer periods of time. Our problems get more complex, and we get tired. We can’t binge-drink for two days and roll out of bed first thing Monday morning. Even if we could manage to get out of bed, we can’t afford to binge-drink anymore. We have to save our paycheck so we can pay the mortgage.

We all have moments where we are mental zombies. No one is immune. You can always tell, too, who is currently a mental zombie. He’s the guy you pass in the hall who has a 2-day shadow when normally he’s clean-shaven. Or she’s the woman wearing drab clothing with bags under her eyes because she didn’t bother putting on her make-up that morning. It makes me wonder what is going on in their personal lives. I try to avoid these scenarios by taking mental health days when I don’t feel up to dragging myself in to work. I wouldn’t get much accomplished anyhow.

We always try to deny our personal selves when we work in a corporate environment, but how, exactly, is one supposed to do that? How does one function when something is going awry in the life that takes place outside the office? In order to keep up the “fast-paced environment,” we are asked to leave our problems at home. Problems such as wondering when the doctor will call with the test results, or worrying about Billy’s sudden erratic behavior at school, or thinking of how we drank til we passed out the night before, the horrible, yet more-common-than-we’d-like-to-admit fight with our spouse, lustful thoughts towards a co-worker, feeling depressed and not able to find the right mix of medications and therapy, a sudden death or illness in the family, financial woes, divorce threats. The list goes on and on and on.

Work is a funny place. We exchange the usual pleasantries, “Hi, how are you? What’d you do this weekend?” And the answer is always, “I’m good, how are you? My weekend was good. I got caught up on the yardwork.” We never hear the truth, which would be more like, “I’m functioning. This weekened sucked. I got into a fight with the wife again about the same old subjects: no sex, no money, kids out of control, and she pissed me off so bad, I couldn’t see straight, so I went out and mowed the lawn, killed the weeds, and cut the shrubs back too short. That got her going again, and instead of hitting her, I kicked the dog. Then I had to take it to the vet. I’m thinking about getting a divorce.” Or maybe the answer would be, “Wow, I feel great! I’m tired, but it’s that good kind of tired. The yard looks like shit, because I’m so far behind on the lawn. I’m sure the neighbor hates us. The wife and I decided to check out this swinger’s club and it made us so hot for each other, we spent the rest of the weekend in bed together. You really ought to try it. You won’t be able to keep your hands off each other for a month!”

The truth is, we don’t really want to know that much about the person who occupies the cube next to us.