Early Days

Before November 2006, I had never owned a share in any company. My only previous experience of trying to get into the stock market was pretty tragic - I bought some units in a mutual fund with prime exposure to IT and dot-com stocks .... in July 2000! Needless to say, that went Down (with a capital D) in flames.

However, last November, we (i.e. My Woman and I) subscribed for a modest 500 shares in the T3 float. Since that went well, emboldened, I started looking at this animal called the stock market with interest.

The main reason why I had never invested in shares before was because I didn't understand them. My understanding of the Indian share market was that 'fundamentals' mattered little - sentiment was all-important; so much so that if the Dow Jones fell marginally, the BSE Index would gyrate like a Bollywood heroine's bosom during a particularly melodramatic scene, and with all the attendant tears. Plus, numerous securities scams in the 90s didn't help me feel interested in finding out more either.

When I arrived in Oz in 2003, I briefly considered if the ASX was going to be different. I went online, decided that since BHP was the only company I'd heard of, it might be worth putting up a few $$. However, since I didn't know whether that was a good time to buy or not, and not knowing where to begin, I quickly found other pursuits to follow. As I recall, BHP was trading around $10. After T3, I went looking for BHP again - found that it had gone as high as $32 the previous May, and felt duly foolish.

Then, I was intrigued, and in January 07, I opened a ComSec account and bought AWB. Why? Because it had gone from $2.50 to $3.26 in just over a month, and I saw somewhere that it had come down from $6+ levels from June of '06 due to the Iraq Wheat scandal. I thought - heck, it might just go back to $6 again, now that the Cole inquiry had submitted its report and heads had rolled.

Since then, I've invested over $8000 in the market ($5000 from My Woman, and $3000 from me); read the mandatory book about Warren Buffett and about finding value in the markets, and found Hotcopper and IncredibleCharts. As of today (i.e. post-'China Syndrome') we are up 10% on our investments. I shortly intend to start trading CFDs, and keeping track of those trades is the main purpose behind this blog. Yup - public hoomiliashun - nothing like it!