PERSONAL FINANCE

Why I’m Out of The Stock Market Game

And why I never should have tried to play

Photo by Oren Elbaz on Unsplash

Playing the stock market with real hard-earned money isn’t for everyone. Some people can make a lot of money from the markets and some make a fuckload of cash buying and selling stocks and bonds.

But that’s just it. That’s their thing — they are finance people. Just like I’m not mechanically inclined I’m not a finance person either. I think it’s in the genes.

Certainly, I’d never choose it as a full-time job. Which is exactly what you have to do. You have to devote all of your energy to making it work.

I’ve dipped my toes in a few times but like gambling, I always lose… everything. That’s why I’m cautious.

It was a lesson I learned in my early teens. My brother’s friend Ernie was like a card shark, but only when money was involved. And he was playing with younger, naive dupes like me.

We played Rummy, Wist, 9–5–2, Cribbage. But with no money involved, he won and lost at about the same rate as the rest of us. Even though he hated to lose.

But he and my brother had been practicing poker — a lot. Late one afternoon, we gathered around our kitchen table for a game of Five-Card-Stud. My brother was finally going…