Honest questions:
Do the folks here who actively invest feel comfortable taking a week or two of? Like, can you go on vacation somewhere -- Acapulco, the Netherlands, wherever -- without checking your portfolio or without paying attention to the financial news? Do you even want to unplug? How do you not let this rule your life?
Anyone loathe the idea of beginning to trade stocks as much as I loathe it, get into it and actually enjoy it?
I'm a wordsmith, an artiste, someone who creates; I'm definitely not a numbers-guy. I mean, I use my calculator and keep a litte cheat sheet in my wallet to ensure I pay the correct tip whenever I eat out (I need absolute silence and have to run the numbers three times to ensure I got it right).
When I gamble, I like to play poker, a game of skill, where I can bluff and psyche out my opponents. I tried Blackjack one time, didn't know how to play, hit when I should have stayed, stayed when I should hit, and everyone at the table got mad at me and pressured me to leave (I had lost my money by that point anyways).
This stock market shit seems like easy money...well, money that I don't actually have to do any real work for. I don't create anything; I'm just making money off of the work and decisions of others. And, the scariest part, it's money that can be taken away from me at the drop of a hat, for seemingly no reason.
I bought a copy of that movie "The Big Short". I didn't even understand what the hell they were talking about. Same with "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps" and "The Wolf of Wall Street". Even "Trading Places" lost me with the whole orange juice trading bit at the end.
I feel like it'll be just my luck that I'll spend the time to heavily research Company X, see it as a good company to invest in, invest in Company X, feel like I've finally earned the chance to relax and focus on my actual passions in life, then, while I'm distracted by things I actually care about, Company X will have been exposed as inflating their numbers, their Founder/CEO will get busted for molesting children or something and jump out of the 20th floor penthouse he has barricaded himself inside of to hide from the cops, everyone else paying attention will all sell sell sell and I'll be the last dumbo still hanging on to Company X's worthless stock when I finally take a look at Yahoo.
Really the main reason I don't play the stock market beyond putting a portion of my income into my 401k in some sort of generic, standard fund which I never look at but which evidently exists...is that it seems so time consuming.
I don't even know if "fund" is the appropriate term for where my money goes; my employer matches it to a certain amount, then I put in a few more percentage points of my income...and it just goes...someplace. I've left three jobs, all where I did this same process and never checked my portfolio. My tax advisor says it's not a problem: I keep the paperwork the financing firms send me so I should be able to access it when I'm ready.
I like money, but I want to unplug, and stay unplugged. I feel like my time on earth is limited, and getting more limited with each passing day. Bonds, dividends, indexes: why would I want to spend any time learning about any of this shit? At least when I buy a pair of Stevie Williams DCs, I get to put them on and wear them.
But everyone is telling me that I need to be more hands-on with my 401k/stock portfolio because I can grow it handidly for the future.
So I ask you, is there hope for me yet?