The world is wild and so is the insanity that is the stock market. Things happen that you would never expect to happen and it throws off everything you had been planning for. It’s incredibly wonderful and horrible, a blessing and a curse. I cannot remember if I have discussed my research on this blog that I curate for the endless void that is the internet. Currently, during my undergraduate degree, out of boredom I started taking interest in the stock market. It’s a curious conundrum; a game with strict rules and regulations that must be followed lest you wish to see the inside of a federal prison or have your dog shot by the IRS in a no knock raid (Actual thing that has happened by the way). Anywho, I wished to research and understand the stock market; specifically the idea of passive income via investments. Now, I didn’t want to get too crazy with my investments if that makes any sense. Many people try to time and play the market on wild day trades and other things that I have no interest in. Why would you have no interest in the tropes of the stock market culture? You may ask. To put it most plain and simple, I have too much anxiety and self hatred to deal with serious gambling. Like seriously, gambling makes me super sad and physically sick if it goes wrong. If there are odds, I feel unlike in those odds and know I won’t win, when I lose I get upset because I basically just lost a crap ton of money. Even if it was a relatively small amount. For example, when I was in early high school I started getting into a video game where there were skins and loot boxes in the game. It’s an open marketplace for the game, so you ca buy, trade, and sell skins to other players. In the game there is a mechanic where you can take like 10 lower tier skins or something, and basically destroy them with a thing called a trade up contract in order to obtain a higher tier skin. Most peoples goal is to trade up for a skin with a higher value than the inputs, and of course the odds to do such are fairly rare for most trade ups. Not all, but most. You can technically do trade ups with small amounts of money and get a few cents profit then you can move up to the higher tier. I did 2 different trade ups, one that cost me $0.30 and $1.26 in inputs, and when I did them I lost like I think $0.10 total. I was so upset that I literally broke down crying and swore I wasn’t going to do it ever again. Now, it may have been an over reaction, but I know I do not do well with gambling on long odds. I like gambling when its in my favor.

The reason I told that story is quite simple because it highlights one of the core things I would begin to research; gambling but at the safest odds in order to generate money. So, I started doing my market research. I learned about something called “dividend yield” which is where for every stock you own that pays dividends they will pay you the investor a fraction of the value of your investment. Depending on the stock, you get paid either every month or every quarter. So I started working on a strategies to invest in the stock market. While doing my research I figured out that if you invest in the stock market consistently every so often you are more likely to turn a profit in the long run. I also learned that short term investment strategies are more volatile than long term investment strategies. For the short term strategies you are more likely to lose everything like you’re doing traditional gambling; if your gamble is bad you can lose everything in an instant. With long term strategies, your essentially filling a pond with a cup of water each day or week or month and over time you’ve filled it up so much it is classified as a lake. With long term strategies, you are less likely to lose everything quickly. So this is what I have been striving to research and look into. I’ve mixed together some strategies and ideas I’ve found floating around and I’ve been investing and doing research. I’ve found a nerdy love of data, oh god I never thought I’d say that. So yeah, I love data now and have a beef cake of a spreadsheet. We gotta love Excel. I update it daily at this point. It keeps getting more and more complex and interesting.

Something I have come to my own conclusion while doing my research that is boring to most people, I have learned something that I am going to share. Now, I am writing academic papers and other stuff where I will share my findings in greater detail, but for right now this is like the general idea. As a low level investor, if you are doing marginal investments on a consistent basis you do not really need to care about the price of a stock. Well, mostly. This applies if you’ve selected a good stock that isn’t going anywhere and pays dividends. So lets say I invest $1 everyday in something that pays dividends and will be around forever. That means I am converting a fresh dollar into a piece of a stock every, and the size of the piece of stock changes. The market goes up and down, and the total value you’ve invest goes up and down with the markets. For most people, that freaks them out and they try and sell. This isn’t something you should do. On average the price of your investments in the stock market will gain something like 9% in value each year (I don’t remember the exact number), so that’s a reason to not sell. Another reason which is much simpler is that when the stock price goes down, yes your total invested amount went down but mainly the stock price went down. This is important, because converting your dollar into a percentage stock each day means you will buy more when the price is down. Most stocks go up and down in cycles, and the market does similar; so this means at a certain points you will be worth more than what you put in or less than what you put in. But if you keep putting in even when your worth less, when your worth more your worth way more. So the stock market drops down, all the big wigs doing their crazy investments lose a crap ton of money and I sit here cheering. I literally giggle with joy, because it means my money will be worth more eventually. Which means the dividends they pay me out later on will be more. So by doing this I have setup a positive feedback loop, because even when the loop is negative it should be positive. Of course, everything’s imperfect, and I am still new and learning constantly; but this is basically like the safest form of gambling. I started researching when a recession had been declared, and in theory it takes 10 to 18 month to recover. If it takes longer, well that means my future profitability when the markets bounce back increases exponentially. Shit is wild homie.

So, I just wanted to share a small piece and observation of my research at this moment. There is more to come and more to share but I don’t feel comfortable with sharing it yet because I have to verify the validity of things before I can feel comfortable enough to share. So stay tuned, eventually there will be more to share haha! Thank you for reading!

-Ben