Public Intoxication
Life is full of surprises, and sometimes when it throws you a bone, you only choke on it briefly.
I’m a serial signer-upper, at least when free stuff is involved. It was probably through Swagbucks or something that I found out about the Public stock trading app. One of those “Deposit $10 to get a $10 match” type of things, plus free stock once the deposit clears. I received $13 in Apple stock, which isn’t bad compared to other apps I’ve used in the past, or I’m using currently. When I’d have a spare $10 or $20, I’d throw it in there just to play around with.
So the account was gradually growing, but it was my secondary one. I rarely used it, but I checked it daily. One day last February, I logged in to a notification for a survey. Take the survey and get free stock, it read, so I did. It took a few minutes, and I didn’t give it much thought after that. Expect little and you’ll rarely be disappointed.
The following week, I log in, look at my balance, and have to do a double-take. It’s much higher than the day before. Turns out every Public user who took the survey got shares of stock from the Williams Rowland Acquisition Company (WRAC) gifted to them, although the amounts varied. I’m still not sure how they determined them, but I ended getting 90-some and the value was over $10 per share! They basically quadrupled the value of my portfolio.
