 Stocks Are DeadDear Outsider, When I was 14 or 15 years old, all I wanted was to get a job. I wanted my own gas money. To go to the movies on the weekend without asking my parents for cash. Maybe take a girl out to mini golf. I also wanted to start saving money. I thought finding a job would be easy. Go fill out an application at the local grocery store, reply to a couple ads in the paper, and I'd be stacking up dollar bills in no time. Well, it wasn't so easy. It took me a long time to find a job. After months and months of searching — when I wasn't in school or playing sports — I finally landed my first summer job at 16 years old. The gig was at the nearest state park. It was tough to land that job because it paid more than minimum wage. I remember calculating how much money I was going to save that summer. But with each paycheck, I quickly realized I was being robbed. Income tax, Social Security... these things were eating away at my hard-earned cash! The more you make, the more they take! How was I supposed to save money like this? I learned firsthand that you can't rely solely on one income stream if you want to get ahead. But that's not the point of your first summer job anyway. The point is to learn new things, acquire interpersonal skills, gain experience handling money, meet new people, gain trust, build a good reputation for yourself... I guess that's really the point of any job. But by the time I left, I had done just about everything there. $6 Billion in Funding Going to a Single Company? Biden has been dishing out funding as if these are his last days on Earth. He's handed out more than $2 trillion in funding during his first few years in office. One of his biggest goals is to develop the future of energy. Shockingly, it has nothing to do with fossil fuels OR renewables. A full $6 billion is headed to an industry dominated by one tiny Virginia-based company. A few critical patent approvals means very few others are on the shortlist. And early investors in this game-changing technology could reap a massive windfall. I started my day working at the park's marina. You can learn a lot about life and investing working on the water. We'd open around 5 a.m., as the boaters are an early crowd. I'd drive to the main office, count the money box, drive down to the store, open up shop, and turn on the lights. My day began with shoveling goose poop off the sidewalk and docks for 30 minutes. It's how I learned that geese are testy little animals. Get too close and they'll hiss. Luckily they were all bark and no bite. I'd grab the American and Maryland flags and string them up the flagpole, indicating to any boaters on the water that we were open for business. Once I was done all my morning chores, I'd set out a chair in front of the door and read a book until my first customer showed up. The lesson here was that getting up early sucks, but watching the sun rise over the water is totally worth it. As it relates to investing: Put in the hard work early and you won't have to catch up later in life. Compound interest only works when you have time on your side. After all, it's not timing the market but time in the market that matters most. Now, sometimes we'd have bass fishing tournaments and open even earlier at 3:30 a.m. Ice, Gatorade, and Cow Tales were our game. Not to mention the gas. We were in charge of a big dock and had a coveted gas pump. After cooking the books at night, I can tell you we made a fortune selling gas. One afternoon, a storm rolled in and the wind was ripping through the place. On the horizon, I could see a boat coming our direction. As it got closer, I hurried out onto the dock and readied the bumpers and ropes. Try as we might, we just couldn't stop the boat from rocking and smacking against the dock. Needless to say, the boater wasn't happy and he angrily drove off. Biden's Spending "Blitz" Set to Launch $5 EV Firm Over $9 billion in federal cash is set to rain down on one overlooked sector of the EV market... And this flood of government capital could send one $5 stock soaring in short order. This could be the biggest EV story of our lifetime. The biggest lesson I learned from pumping gas is don't dock your boat in a storm — it never ends well. As it relates to investing: Do your research about coming market-moving events, and if you see a storm brewing, don't have all your money riding on one stock. Make sure you have enough money in the bank to weather the storm. Another big moneymaker for the park was renting out small fishing boats with outboard motors that we'd carry back and forth from the shop to the beach all day. My coworkers and I were jacked and tan, basically living a lifeguard lifestyle without the added responsibility. I smelled like sunscreen and gasoline every summer, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. Explaining to people how to start an outboard motor in case they're stranded in the middle of the water is definitely a bit nerve-wracking, but we never had a single problem. When a boat came back in, I'd help the customers out onto the beach and then tie it up on the dock. One day I looked out at the docks to see three or four of our boats drifting out to sea. Being young and stupid, I asked my coworker if he thought the tide would bring them back in. When he looked outside, he panicked and told me to "swim out there and bring them back in now!" The biggest lesson I learned from renting boats is to make sure you know your knots and have a sense of urgency when you see a problem — you never know when a wave is coming that'll knock your ropes loose and scatter your boats all over the place. Otherwise, you're going to have a very wet rest of the day. As it relates to investing: It's not a matter of if something will go wrong, it's when. We can never predict which direction the market will move, but if you see your money sinking into the abyss, not all hope is lost. With the stock market so volatile lately, there's a lot of money flowing out of stocks and into IPOs and pre-IPOs. In fact, my colleague Jason Williams says stocks are dead! With experience as a Wall Street banking analyst for Morgan Stanley, Jason gives the same strategies to his readers that he used to help the ultra-wealthy get even richer on Wall Street. With his first-of-its-kind pre-IPO investment advisory service, Jason taps his network he spent the past two decades building so you can find and invest in the next breakout stocks before they hit the open market. Stay frosty,
Alexander Boulden After Alexander's passion for economics and investing drew him to one of the largest financial publishers in the world, where he rubbed elbows with former Chicago Board Options Exchange floor traders, Wall Street hedge fund managers, and International Monetary Fund analysts, he decided to take up the pen and guide others through this new age of investing. Check out his editor's page here. Want to hear more from Alexander? Sign up to receive emails directly from him ranging from market commentaries to opportunities that he has his eye on. |
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