Well, I grew up in Los Angeles, the daughter of a stockbroker and commodity dealer. My mother believed in family dinners every weeknight, and back then we didn't have a whole lot of extracurricular activities in the evenings. So we had real dinners, with real conversation. My parents would talk about their days, and I'd listen to stories of what happened that day in the markets (or what chaos my brother or I had caused). I remember coffee mugs with bulls and bears on them looking like they were walking in a ticker tape parade, and a miniature ticker tape machine in something that resembled a butterfly jar. But to make a long story short, the environment sunk in and eventually germinated an interest in stocks and commodities. Or better yet commodity stocks.
In my mind, gold is king, baby. But other resource stocks are cool, too. Like all gold bugs, just about anything shiny will catch my eye, if it's worth owning. Lately, that means just about any liquid or metallic thing. Plants are also good these days. But since I have a general love of stocks, and just about anything that moves the world economy, I invest more broadly than just commodity stocks.
I would say that I find the junior commodity stocks the most exciting, probably because they're the most volatile, and also have the best chance to make you stinking rich. Geology is something tangible, and in the case of assays and resource reports, something measurable. So you usually know what you're getting. I mean, if played right, with certain resource stock juniors you can pretty much win the lottery. So nothing grabs my interest like an awesome junior resource story.
The problem though with junior resource stock stories is that there are so many people out there pumping some story or other, so you never really know what's true. There's a lot of manipulation, and a lot of misinformation out there. I've been burned more than a few times by believing stuff I read online, from sources that I really thought were credible. A lot of analysts out there are getting paid good money for telling a good story, so you've got to go with your gut a lot of the time. Or you have to learn the industry inside and out, and that's pretty hard when it comes to each type of resource being traded. They really are specialties amongst themselves.
Lesson #1: unless you are one of those aforementioned experts, you better only be using the money you can afford to lose.
And, reading those last paragraphs, you'd know one thing. I'm no expert. I'm just a regular person, (I don't even work in the finance or trading biz), with a freakish interest in the way commodities and politics shape our world economy and I use this interest to trade and invest in stocks.
But this is my hobby. I let real economists (at TD Bank mostly) invest money in stocks through the equity mutual funds that best align with what I believe will make the most money in the coming years. There is a basket of mutual funds that I invest a specified amount in each month, employing the law of averages in my long-term investments for retirement. I change the mutual fund ratio around from time to time to reflect my view of the world economy, but the day to day trades are totally left up to those mutual fund managers. I also have a very conservative pension, because I'm a government worker (municipal government to be specific). So, I get the sweet matching pension investments from my employer (that someday I can roll into a self-directed retirement fund if that pension really pisses me off or if I'm worried about it going belly up). So for the most part, I really don't have to worry that much about the companies that I'm trading or investing in.
And those are two different things in my mind by the way, trading and investing. I invest in some companies for the long term, because I believe in their story or I'm pretty comfortable with the things they do. They probably don't have a lot of exposure to really evil governments (although evil in government is such a loose definition these days) or practices, and if I walked away from finance news and the Internet for a few months, I wouldn't have to worry too much about this company. In my mind, they've got it right, and I'm cool with helping them fund their business.
Trading, now that's another story. That's for pure profit, and I'm hoping to get out of the stocks in a matter of months. I'm shooting for the moon with those, not the steady climb to the hill on the horizon. It's about momentum and gut feelings, and often is done with profits from my more steady investments.
Oh yeah, and one more thing: I'm 37 years old. So I don't have to retire anytime soon. Although it would be super cool if I did not have to worry much about the daily grind by the time I turn 45 or 50.
Okay, I know it sounds like I'm rambling, but what I'm trying to drive home is that I'm no expert, and I'm youngish so I'm not worried too much about risk. Draw your own conclusions on how that relates to you.
I've worked my way from California to Canada, and I've seen a lot of regional economies along the way. I was also a geography major in University, so geography will play a big part in my decision on whether something is a short trade or long term investment.
I guess that leaves us with the one last thing you should probably know: I'm an American living in Canada. That translates into the fact that I have to deal with two different sets of tax laws. But it also means that I'm learning, with the help of paid tax guidance, how to work the different systems to my advantage.
So that's my story. Thanks for reading.
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