The Joys of Investing

I love reading finance news, finance commentaries, stock trading tips, etc.  Maybe it's because I had some very good experiences in the past.  Back in 1998, during the Technology Bubble, I started to trade stocks during my maternity leave.  I got tips from friends and family.  It was so fun.  It seemed we could do no wrong.   Those were the good old days when RIM traded at $6 per share!  I started with $8,000 and in 10 months it was at $95,000.  That was right before the end of the year - should have cashed out then.  But, I did not.  I wanted it to eke out another $5,000 to make it a round number of $100,000.  Lesson number 1 - I should have put in Stop Orders!  Well, I cashed out the day Nortel went into a coma - it's value was halved.  My portfolio went from $95K to $44K in 1 day.  Well, I'm glad I did not hang on like many people did - Nortel had since died.  $8K to $44K in 10 months was still a pretty good return.  It was such a scary experience that I stopped trading altogether.  I was also back at work and no longer had the time to monitor those stocks.  I understand from the Indices that it was a "lost decade" anyways - so, I did not miss much.  Fast forward 10 years - I got back in.  I'll talk about some of my experiences in this blog.