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Finance | Stocks
Losing Myself In Another Stat Obsession
Red and green aren’t just Christmas colors
Investing can be infectious. It’s not like a savings account where money is safe and protected. Yet it’s also not like going to the casino. Even though sometimes investing can feel like buying a winning lottery ticket, more factors into a good or bad decision than luck alone. Each dollar risked on the market presents another opportunity for reward.
A few months ago, I got serious about stocks. At first, all I could bring myself to do was watch. After 30 days, the app I found gave me some introductory stocks. That started the ball rolling, the green and red markers slowly etching themselves into my heart.
In total, I got about $60 in free stocks. Of course, I could have cashed them out and just made off with the gain. But in the day it took me to realize they had dropped into my account, their prices had already risen or fallen. I stared at the numbers, %⬆ and $⬇ forcing me to imagine what would happen if I added my money to the mix. The stocks going up could bring even more, right? And the ones going down would likely go up again eventually. Probably.
My first actual investment wasn’t in the stocks gifted to me. Instead, I searched for stocks below $5. After a few days of…
