Fidgeting around with Google Finance was like discovering that you're that 98 pound weakling who harbored a hidden superpower all along. I'm not too proud to admit that I felt positively giddy with self-congratulatory delight. Oh, what a glorious way to spend the warmest part of the day. But I suppose there are worse ways to waste my time on a hot summer's day, so why not poke around the internet and play with my portfolio?ĪT LAST!!!! SURPRISE! EXCITEMENT AND ACTION!!!!!!!Īccording to Google Finance, it now turns out that our family portfolio has managed to outperform the overall stock market by around 7% over the past five years - not even including the portfolio's market-beating 2.6% dividend yield. I know that comparing my portfolio performance to the overall stock market is stupid - nobody cares about the outcome besides me and even I like to tell myself that I don't care all that much. Today I decided to loaf around for a while using Google Finance. Consequently, I sometimes spend a bit more time indoors - especially during "evil hour" (which is the four-hour period between 1:45am to 5:00pm when the sun is highest in the sky). It's been quite warm and quite sunny in Lisbon over the past couple of days. well, just to do SOMETHING because isn't that what people are supposed to be doing with money that they manage? You Only Need to Get it Right Once or Maybe Twice. there is always that persistent desire to tinker, isn't there? To enhance. I think we all know that any decision we make to combat boredom is almost certainly the wrong decision.Īnd yet. I'll admit that I tend to ignore my own best rational instincts in many (or most) aspects of my personal life, but not when it comes to this. My advice to anyone who self-manages their finances? Resign yourself to keeping it boring. Yet even now as a (very) mature 52-year-old, I still cannot help but notice that all broom and mop handles bear a slight resemblance to lightsabers. So now you can plainly see that I do appreciate why attempting to "spice up" boring tasks carries certain risks of backfiring. And it's on one very such occasion that I accidentally swung a mop handle deftly into a display case of cookies that all ended up skittering across the floor like flaky, crumbling hockey pucks.Īpparently, the supervisor was not in the mood for that. ![]() So, you know, to sort of spice things up, a co-worker and I would sometimes wield brooms or mops like nunchucks while making sounds like Bruce Lee in action. Golly but I sure did find that aspect of the job boring. Like everyone else who pulled the evening shift, I had to stay behind to help clean up after closing. But there is just one big problem with that: IT IS BORING!!!!ĭid you know that I once got fired from my job? I was 17 years old and worked as a short order cook at a delicatessen. ![]() You see, as a private retail investor, I really only have just one financial mandate: invest in stocks that generate reliable passive income, spend less than I earn, and reinvest the savings to compound my portfolio income. And I think I know why I like to do this. Meaning, there are certainly better ways to spend my time, but there's no real harm picturing myself as Batman, swooping onto the floor of the NYSE to buy shares of beaten-down stocks from villainous short-sellers. In terms of utility, my finance hobby isn't appreciably different from reading comic books. The best (and perhaps only) answer that I can come with is that I somehow just enjoy reading financial content. ![]() I've been asking myself that question for some time now. So why on Earth do I still keep spending my time reading market commentary? The only guarantee when it comes to investing is that nobody has any real clue what the stock market will do next, when it will do it or for how long.
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