Anyone else here an investment guru part time?

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Just go into the stock market and real estate investment world this past year. Ive been actively managing my money to a few real estate deals and buying (what I believe) are discounted stocks. Do any of you put money into investments? If so what kind? What sort of companies and why? Where do you think the best place to put the American dollar would be???

I gamble a little bit.

I opened a stock market account earlier this year with $1000. I haven't put anymore in, and it's up to $2400.


I've mostly been going with "panic selling" stocks that I think will stay in business and recover, once I think that they've hit bottom. I've been right sometimes and wrong sometimes, but my big break was when I bought some Freddie Mac a couple of weeks ago. Bought at $0.85 (then more at $1.15), sold at $2.64.


Right now is another downturn. I bought low and they went lower. It's kind of crazy that I bought one of the stocks for less than 2 times earnings (and posting year-over-year increases in profit of over 100%), and it went even lower. There could be problems that I don't know about, but all should be revealed at the next earnings release.


I see it more as entertainment than anything, because I've been going the very high risk route. As soon as I get another opportunity to sell (when my current holdings go up), I'm going to pay off my debt.

Once the debt is gone and I start having money left over each month, I'll probably put 80% into solid yet unexciting stocks/index funds, and the remaining 20% in the risky/volatile stuff.

I am an investor... definitely not a guru. This is a terrible year for investing btw... I have lost some serious money in the last month (>$10,000) because of the meltdown... however, this is just on paper because I haven't sold yet. I can afford to hold onto my stocks for 4 years, 40 years, whatever. Even if I lose it all (I've put about $23,000 in individual stocks this year), I'll be fine because I have no debt and will likely get a high paying job in the next few years. I will be more cautious in the future though in light of the market I've lived through... One day I might get more into stock analysis and get serious, but I'm not interested in putting any more money on the market for a long time. If you are going to put enough money out there to actually make big profits, you have to be willing to stomach big volatility and the potential scenario of vaporized life savings if that is the case. Maybe when I'm 60 or so I'll have enough money to live off investments.