Investing!

I decided to do a little experiment. I set aside some money and opened up a brokerage account with TD Ameritrade (Supposedly one of the better online brokers). I don't really have any investing experience, but I do have some fairly general background knowledge of how the stock market works. I also read a lot of analysis of the technology industry.

Now, in general I know it's not the greatest idea to buy individual stocks if you're a long-term investor and you're not an expert. I do have some money in a Roth IRA, as well as a 401(k) that is fed by my modest college-student earnings. Buying these stocks isn't an investment strategy, it's just for fun. I could spend the money going to Vegas, but all in all I think I'll enjoy myself more (and probably retain my money longer) investing it in companies that I have some knowledge of.

SO! Here's what I bought:

1 share of Amazon @ $203
Amazon was one of the few survivors of the first dot com bubble. Now they're the biggest and best online retailer, and they're also offering first rate cloud computing services now, as well as being being the second company in history to launch a tablet that people are falling over themselves to buy. Amazon was by far my most expensive buy, but I think it's a relatively safe bet.

2 shares of Netflix for $159 total
Netflix is the biggest name in streaming media. They've made some PR gaffes in the last few months and raised prices which caused them to lose about 4% of their customers, but I think their ultimate intention (which is to focus more on streaming and less on mailed DVDs) is forward-looking and intelligent. Analysts are making snide remarks about their plummet in share price, which was near $300 in mid summer, and now it's down below $80. Temporary setback and good buying opportunity, in my opinion. Streaming is the future, and I think Netflix shares will recover.

7 shares of Nokia for $46 total
This one is my biggest gamble. Nokia makes the kind of simple, cheap, functional cell phone that is slowly being replaced by much cooler smartphones. They're betting heavily on Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7. WP7 is an excellent product, but it's late to market. They're the underdog. Being the underdog is why Nokia shares are under $7 each. Cheap enough for me to take a gamble on.

Important Message to America

I wasn't going to post this but some trusted friends convinced me to try to get the word out in spite of the risk it might bring to me personally. The iPhone 4S has a dual core A5 processor. If you do the math, two A5's come out to A^2 + 10A + 25 cores of power on every silicon. Graph it. It's a parabola. Fact: Intellectual Ventures holds 27 parabola-related patents (the same number as there are amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Coincidence? You decide.) Why do you think Apple is so secretive? If you buy an iPhone 4S with a dual core processor, or any phone that utilizes parabolas, Nathan Myhrvold can send an Intellectual Ventures goon to your house beat you and your family with his expensive Taliban-backed cookbook. The recently passed America Invents Act contains a buried clause that allows him to do this to you by bypassing habeus corpus (which is latin, in case you don't read history) and establishing Intellectual Ventures as a secret fourth branch of government. Democrats and Republicans voted on this law and Obama signed it with NO media attention. Don't believe me? History is on my side; Galileo was laughed at until the Free Masons backed him against the Pope. Intellectual Ventures was founded by two ultra-wealthy Microsoft execs. That's the same Microsoft that put the "MS" in MSNBC, a news channel that let the America Invents Act slide by without proper scrutiny. It makes sense. The only way to stop this is to call your representatives NOW and repost this on your facebook wall. This is to protect the innovation that makes America great.