mycatharsis.com

For the first time since the late 90’s, I’ve decided to open a brokerage account and start trading stocks again. Hopefully I’ll have more success than my first time around, when I figured Netscape Communications was a great investment and decided to pass on Ebay at $18 a share, just before it shot up to literally 10 times that amount. Being the wonderful thing that it is, our minds never let us forget muck ups like that. One thing I realized this time around though, is that I don’t really understand why people buy stocks in the first place. Yes, I know about dividends and hoping the price rises. But why buy stock in a company that doesn’t pay dividends? Is it basically guessing and hoping that the price goes up sometime in the future? The Fool.com has this article from May 2000 that explained it in a way even i could understand. Now to find that next eBay, and hoping for a resurgence of ‘irrational exuberance’, hehe.