Essay on Stocktracking

Google Inc. (GOOG) was purchased on September 8th, 2011 and sold on December 6th , 2011 with quantity of 5 shares. The purchase price was $534.96 and the closing price was $625.25, which gave me a total return of $431.45 after deducting commissions.

There are many ways the stock market has influenced our economy over the years. When the stock market first opened in 1896, it only included 12 companies (O’Sullivan 297). Since the stock market was established, it has shown a positive trend (Barbash 17). When the Dow Jones index originally opened, it was at 40.94 points. Today, the Dow index is around 20,730.31 points.

During the 1920's millions of Americans began investing in stocks for the first time. They heard about how rich people were getting by investing so they all decided to do it. Many new investors entered the stock market using borrowed money. Stock market prices rose steadily as inflated market demand outpaced increases in the capital value of businesses. Investors began to realize that a large imbalance existed between stock prices and the amount of money needed to back them up, and began to sell. On October 29, 1929, great numbers of people tried to sell their stocks all at once. This created chaos in the accounting of stocks and for brokers. The New York Stock Exchange and other exchanges prices dropped so dramatically that this event became known as the crash of 1929. Millions of investors lost their savings in the crash and many were deeply in debt since

III. During my deployment with the Army in 2008, I decided that there was no better time to invest in the stock market, and I have been doing so ever since.

The stock market has always intrigued me and I have since been eager to learn more about it. Starting back in January of this year, I ordered three textbooks on stock trading to become more informed on the subject. After reading these books, I gained further insight on stock trading which led me to open my own brokerage account where I could buy and sell stocks. I started by playing a stock simulation which was very similar in concept to StockTrak, a program we used in this class. I found that this helped provide me with a hands on experience which helped familiarize me with stock trading and learning how to manage and use my money efficiently. I continued to play this simulation for about two months and during this time my portfolio grew about 4%, which provided me a confidence boost and motivated me to invest in my real money into the stock market. In March of 2015, I officially began trading in the stock market and I continued to learn along the way. As of now, I have roughly nine months of stock trading experience. As stated previously, I have always had in interest in the stock market, but I never acted upon it until as recently as earlier this year. My interest in the stock market was peaked because I enjoy taking risks and the stock market

In the beginning of the stock market game I bought only stocks in only 5 different companies, those companies were all companies that I was familiar with. The five companies were Apple, American Eagle, Costco, Disney and Hershey. I bought Apple stock because who doesn’t think of Apple when they think of big companies with a lot of money.

I was not prepared to deal with dramatic and rapid changes, as a long-term investor. In 2003 and 04 I decided that it

The company does a lot of technology work. The best stock i had was Microsoft. I bought 111 shares of it and it went up 4.41% since i bought it. I made a total of $260 off of it. This was the stock that i had originally wanted to invest all my money into but i backed out of my plan and invested into multiple stocks to decrease my risk. The reason i had invested into seven stocks was that i knew some would drop and some would gain so i wanted to balance out my money that way if one stock started doing really bad i would have another one doing good, decreasing my risk. When i bought my stocks i decided that i would just leave them alone and see how the gain or decrease. I didn't want to keep selling and buying more. This strategy didn't work out so well because my US oil stock dropped so low. i should've sold it when it was reasonable and bout something that would make me money. Later down the road that stock would make me a lot of money when the price of oil goes up and that why i think i kept it instead of selling

My portfolio contained many Technology stocks such as Intel, Microsoft, Roku, and Activision Blizzard. I knew that Technology stocks were likely to rise based on previous stock trends. I also invested in Honda, due to its recent growth. I invested in Exxon as a result of the flood in Texas, where gas was in high demand. I invested in Starbucks following the release of their popular pumpkin

The stocks I brought were growth stocks, values stocks, and income stock. Investing in growth stock will allow my share within the company to be more profitable, because the companies’ profits are reinvested creating a substantial amount of cash flow within the company. I brought value stock, because there are companies that I believe will be worth investing in for their long-term growth. I could diversify between different companies ranging from most popular to unpopular. Finally yet importantly income stock, which will gradually grow during my time horizon to offset inflations within my stocks. Purchasing these three types of stocks will allow me to split up my initial $100,000 fund into the industries I am going to invest in.

3. My third company I chose to invest $40,000 into was Mastercard Inc. Mastercard’s incorporation is exchanged by NYSE. MasterCard Incorporated, a payments and technology company, together with its subsidiaries, provides transaction processing and other payment-related services in the United States and internationally. Its payment solutions include payment programs, product development, payment processing technology, payment security, consulting, and information services and marketing. The company provides transaction processing services comprising transaction switching, which include authorization, clearing, and settlement; connectivity services, such as network access, equipment, and the transmission of authorization and settlement messages; and other payment-related services, including products used to prevent or detect fraudulent transactions, cardholder services, professional consulting and research services, compliance and penalty, account and transaction enhancement services, holograms, and

This can help determine whether or not to sell or buy more as the stock might be in the bull market. I made more than a few mistakes because I did not read and analyze the stock more. The first mistake was selling Fitbit too early. The stock I thought would be on the rise because everyone would be buying it for a christmas gift. However during the two weeks that I held it Fitbit dropped quite a bit. Considering I bought 3000 stocks of FIT I was worry. When FIT rose one day I sold it immediately. It turned out that there was a came that FIT was being bought by a chinese company. The stock rose over one dollar which would have made my portfolio

Over the past semester in Economics I have invested in and monitored the stock market. I learned how investing in certain companies can be risky and proper research about the companies are detrimental before buying stocks. Three stocks that have influenced most of my financial earnings and losses include Twitter, Amazon, and Pepsi.

At first I bought some shares of Netflix and when they started making so much profit, I decided to cut my losses and sold all the other shares I had. With all the money I had left, I bought Netflix shares and from 13th position jumped to the 8th. But at the last moment (just 2 days before the end of game) I slipped down to 11th as I could not play on the last day as I had 2 mid terms the following day.

Further, our strategy involved paying attention to current events and attempting to use them to generate a return. For example, Horizon Pharmaceuticals’ stock price took a nosedive after an October 19th New York Times article suggested that Horizon was attempting to thwart Express Scripts’ attempts to lower the price of prescription drugs. The decision was made to buy 100 shares of stock in Horizon when its price spiraled down to a measly $14.62 per share, as we expected Horizon would do something to stop the bleeding, and historically has been a pretty volatile stock. Horizon came back with a scorching rebuttal in an open letter later that day, spiking its stock price more than 30% on October 23rd, and by October 28th, this move landed us our greatest return of any stock that we purchased and held until the end of the period: 18% (see appendix).