Playing the stocks

Lev had saved a little money, and somehow got it in his head that he wanted to play the stock market. He had heard everything was down and figured it had to go back up. He thought it would be more fun if we did it together, so we each put $500 in on the same stocks. He chose what he knew: Dell, Sony, and Microsoft. To me these were three ex-successful tech stocks, but he was so confident, and it seemed like he had done his homework. Soon after investing they all started to go up. It was eerie. I realized that he actually had the business sense that the rest of the extended family sadly lacked, it was neat to see. He was not happy with how Dell was doing and quickly dumped it at a break even. He patiently waited while Sony and Microsoft climbed. One day he texted me from school: sell! sell! Guess he had a hunch that it was time. I sold them off and we each made $250, for a 50% gain. Not too shabby! I was deeply impressed. He was very happy, but decided that stocks were not for him. He did not like rooting for these faceless corporations. The funny thing was that he was not surprised or elated about his gains, but expected this outcome the whole time. Maybe he could have been a rich man, he had that sense...and he certainly had charisma :-)