Today is a day

After losing what is a lot of money to me at a crucial time in my financial life, I have recently decided to take my financial matters into my own hands and become an active investor. My first taste with investing directly in the stock market was a painful one to put it kindly, but you live an you learn. But because of this, I have been afraid to put my foot out there and take any real risks even if research shows that it could benefit me greatly. I've had the majority of my savings stored away in a mutual fund managed by somebody I've never met in an industry that I, frankly, don't follow. And I realized when the fund dropped unexpectedly after a relatively profitable 3 years, I should've been able to see this coming. I mean they even told me in the fund prospectus for 2006/2007 that it would be hard to maintain such growth because of several factors which I should have listened to, but I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. oops.

I've been researching certain stocks for the past few weeks and I believe I have come up with a couple short-term winners that I should be able to get my money back with. Lucklily for me, I found a brokerage where I can trade free for 30 days and they'll give me $100 for signing up. Well, hey I can't lose, much ;) This is by far the biggest risk I have planned to take with my money, but I have a plan. And I believe if I can stick to it, I can easily gain my money back in days and turn a profit in weeks.

I'm going to become a day trader, that's right. I don't need to be greedy, I just need to gain about 0.5-1.5% a day and I'll be set. Now you wonder how I can do this with a full time job, me too. I hope this doesn't come back to bite me in the a**. I mean, because when you're a day trader 20 minutes can mean a lot. But at least, I can rest assured that if I lose money one day, I can gain it back the next.

Fate has put the October 2007 issue of Money magazine into my hands and believe it or not, it has given me a lot of faith in myself in that, for most aspects of my finances, I am doing the right thing or am ahead of the game. And After reading Warren Buffet's 2006 letter to shareholders, I realize that if he can become the chairman of a company with annual revenues approaching 100 billion at the age of 35 (in 1965) I have a lot of room for growth in the next few years. I may very well never even come close to the accomplishments of Warren Buffet, but I sure as heck can do better than having only a few thousand to my name. And I'm going to do it.