Adventures on the Stockmarket

At the end of 2008, I entered the stock market. I decided to do this in Ocotober, my savings were starting to grow, and I decided I could afford to put some in a higher risk investment. I initially wanted to put in $10,000, and I planned to split it between 4 stocks, but the time investment in researching stocks eventually forced me to scale back. I put $5000 in one stock, RIMM, more commonly known as as the smartphone "Blackberry".

My reasoning was that RIMM was way underpriced, before the stockmarket crash in September it was as high as $145 a share. With the new Blackberry Storm being released at the end of November - the Storm is a direct iPhone competitor, and with so many Enterprise Blackberry users - I suspected the Storm would be a big hit. RIMM was floating around the $47/48 price when I started to watch it. I decided to wait until it was around $45 to buy. Finally, on the 11th November, it hit $45, and I bought 110 shares at $44.74 a share. My plan was to sell at $50. I'd seen it do this several times while waiting for it to drop to $45, so I was confident.

The stock proceeded to drop to $39. I was in the for the long haul, I wasn't expecting a quick buck, and I still wasn't worried, even though I'd lost $500. The Storm released and the stock slowly crept back up. Finally, in mid-Jan, 60 days later, it hit my target of $50, and I sold for $50.34, a neat little profit of ~$600.

Of course two weeks later it shot up to $60 a share, but I had made a good return, 12% over 60 days. No need to be greedy. As I type this it has dropped down to $47 again. If it drops back to my buy level, I will buy again.

I've included a chart of the stock price over the last 6 months.