At 66, I have (just) enough money to live on for the rest of my life, if things don’t get too weird.
Although I own mutual funds, I can’t really afford to play the market, so I mostly don’t. I only own four individual stocks.
Here’s what they are and why I bought them.
Amazon
I bought Amazon stock several years ago. Pre-pandemic. Why? I realized that no matter where I went, there were little stacks of Amazon boxes in front of all the houses.
People had stopped going to the store if they wanted, for instance, a fly swatter. They just ordered one on Amazon and it turned up on the front porch the next day in a cardboard box.
And there was nobody else providing this service! Everybody I knew was ordering everything they wanted from Amazon and nobody seemed likely to stop.
This seemed worth buying into.
It definitely was.
Crispr
I bought 100 shares of Crispr when a doctor I knew told me to buy some because Crispr was doing something very cool and useful and potentially profitable when it came to gene-splicing. Unlike with Amazon, I have no real understanding of what Crispr is or what they do, but it has done nothing but go up.
(That same doctor also told me to buy Tesla stock, but like a fool I didn’t.)
Alphabet, formerly Known as Google
I bought Google very early on. Not right after it went public, but soon thereafter. Why? I bought in when I realized that Google had become a verb.
People had stopped saying “I searched for it online.” Instead, they said, ‘I googled it.”
Even if they’d used a different search engine!
“Google” now meant “search online.”
It seems to me that buying stock in that made sense.
And it did. I only wish that I’d bought more.
Zoom
I bought Zoom stock yesterday, for exactly the same reason I once bought Google. The word Zoom has become synonymous with “online meeting.” Even if they’re using a different app, people say “We had a Zoom meeting” or “Zoom Wedding” or “Zoom funeral.”
I bought stock in Zoom a week after I attended my grandson’s Zoom Baby-naming. I have no idea if we actually used Zoom. But we all called it a “Zoom Baby-Naming.”
To me, that seemed like a good time to buy into it.
Will this turn out to have been a wise purchase? I have no idea. I guess we’ll see when it’s time to cash it in to help pay for my Zoom grandson’s college.
So What’s My Stock-Picking Advice?
What kind of idiot would take stock-picking advice from a humorist? That being said, I guess my best advice would be to buy stocks (1) very sparingly, and (2) only when it seems really stupid not to.
And when one of your favorite doctors tells you to buy stock in electric cars?
Pay more attention.
