Photo: Deal Drop Images, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://www.dealdrop.com/
I have never invested in one share of stock in my life. Boom! That should scare anybody away who came to this article looking for advice on whether or not to buy Dogecoin. That is not what this article is about. I am an amateur as far as the stock market goes. However, because I am a New York State certified social studies teacher I am well aware of the history of the stock market. It’s one of the reasons probably why I’ve never purchased any stock. I’ve seen what it can do to people. It’s made a handful of people rich, well maybe more than a handful, but it’s also destroyed many lives too. Any extra money I have ever had to spend I usually just invested in my businesses or my trade. Yet, just a couple of days ago on Saturday April 15th I purchased about $250 worth of Dogecoin shares at an average of about $0.33 a share. Here’s why I did it.
My youngest son who is in his second year of college is one of the most intelligent human beings I’ve ever know. He goes to school for the arts, not for business. A few months ago he told me about a cryptocurrency that he was purchasing for around a penny a share. He was spending less than $100 in purchasing this stock so I wasn’t too worried about him throwing his money away. I also liked that he was interested in investing his money. On Friday April 14th, he sent me an email showing me that his $95 purchase in January had grown to about $2,000. Of course this caught my eye.
My first instinct was to advise him. My second Instinct was to keep my mouth shut. Like I said previously, I really do not know much about the stock market besides knowing how it works and its history. I knew I couldn’t tell him to sell because what happens if the stock continues to grow and he winds up losing tons of money he could have made if he kept it. On the other hand, what if the Dogecoin went completely straight down back to where it started and he wound up losing that profit that he could have made this weekend? So instead of giving advice I simply asked him what was he going to do? He stated “I’m in it for the long run Dad, not selling for a long time.”
The numbers that he showed me really piqued my interest in what was going on. In my research I discovered that a good part of this crazy rise of Dogecoin was due to the Reddit community. So of course I started reading everything that they were saying on Reddit. It wasn’t just about what they were saying, but how many people were saying it. My son first purchased Dogecoin because Elon Musk was behind it. Yet for me, it was the fact that there seemed to be this huge community of young people all focused on coming together as a team to drive this stock up. I was well aware of the Game Stop episode. But this seemed different. Was this Reddit community filled with simply dreamers without much stock experience all just shooting for the moon as Elon Musk had recently tweeted. Were they unaware of the stock market crashes and bear and bull market changes and corrections? Or were they all keenly aware of history and looking to fuel a driving force of buying power that would not let up until they all…..reached the moon?
Could a community of people that were obviously not wealthy experienced investors generate enough buying power together to all profit immensely? Their voices were definitely being heard as was their money. But once again it was their voices that seemed to yield the most power. Those voices have been heard by many experienced and wealthy investors who are now watching all of this very closely. I am not talking about the ones who write columns and offer advice, I am talking about the ones behind the scenes that can impact the numbers wit their vast amounts of wealth. What would they do? My guess was they were sensing the same opportunity that the Reddit community was trying to ignite for themselves. Of course there are those professionals who are just laughing at the Reddit community waiting for it all to fall apart. Maybe it will. But my sense of history and the power of the people in mass from, along with the power brokers behind the scenes tells me something special is going on here. At least special enough to risk a couple hundred of bucks on. In the end, it was really just about experiencing something else in life with my son together. And that as the commercial says, that is priceless.
Disclaimer: This is an entertainment news article. It is not offering any financial advice at all. Which you probably could tell if you read the entire thing…….
