Tempting, if I knew how

I don’t really know shit about stocks.  I know the general basic concept of buying shares when you can afford to purchase them, and then it’s a waiting game of hoping they rise and not fall, and if they do fall, sitting on them until they can hopefully rise back up.  And then you sell them, hopefully for more than what you paid for them.

Regardless of my general lack of knowledge, I’m absolutely fascinated with stories about the stock market, whether they’re films like Boiler Room or The Wolf of Wall Street, or numerous books written by Michael Lewis who seems to have a niche writing about stock market stories and/or gambling, but I guess in a way the stock market is basically like gambling, and gambling is something that I do enjoy doing myself, which probably explains why I’m so easily fascinated by stories about the stock market.

The thing is, despite my general fascination of the stock market, I don’t even have the slightest clue to dipping even a toe into the pool.  Supposedly, I could get on apps like Robin Hood or set up an account with like eTrade or some other service, but like I said, I have no idea.  Furthermore, I often ask myself if this is the kind of rabbit hole I even want to explore going down the first place, because as I said, it’s basically gambling outside of a casino, and I’ve most certainly done my share of losing money in a casino, so it might not be such a great idea to put myself in a situation where I can lose it outside of one.

If I were single and without children, the circumstances would probably be different to where I might feel inclined to try, but my life in general these days is more than just myself and I always have to consider that, so in spite of my temptation and curiosity, the likelihood of me actually partaking in it is pretty minimal.

Regardless, it’s hard to not be fascinated, curious and of course tempted, when hearing of the wacky hijinks of the internet where from what I understand, Reddit has basically colluded in a manner, to seemingly artificially inflate the price of GameStop stock, to where it start off at worthless, but has ballooned up like 140%, and people are literally making large returns on investment in quick in-and-outs. 

There are numerous people that I know that are buzzing about it, and have put some skin into the game, and I’d definitely love to be among them, but like I said, I don’t feel like I’m really in the position to be as flippant with my money, and that’s coming from someone who spends hundreds of dollars on replica wrestling blets, but more importantly, I don’t want to create a habit or become addicted to it, because I love winning, I hate losing, and I’m not saying that I’ve ever had any inkling of a gambling problem, but I’m also not able to access Las Vegas every day.

But damned am I fascinated by it all, and tempted if the circumstances were different, because it literally seems like a really easy way to make some real quick and thrilling scratch if I just ponied up a little start-up capital and pulled out quickly.