Macbook

My laptop finally bit the dust a few weeks ago. After months of having to adjust the screen just to be able to see something, the machine finally decided that it didn't even want to turn on anymore. And now it was my turn to finally get a Mac, something that I have been thinking about getting for a few years now.

So, last Thursday, I made my way to the Apple store to pickup my 13' Macbook (which set me back about $1,500. I also bought the Apple Care with it- I normally hate getting extended warranties, but since I have had terrible luck with laptops in the past, I figured it would make sense to spend the extra few bucks on this. Long enough side note? I think so, let's move on.) and I have been in love with it ever since.

I still have not played around with any of the features of the machine, or any of the cool Apple products on here (Garage Band, etc) but I still can't get enough of it. I love the battery life, and how I can just close the lid and the machine will be fine for quite some time without being charged. For example, the other day I was gone over 24-hours from the Macbook, yet when I finally opened it up, I still had two hours of battery life left. I cannot being to describe how amazing it feels to be able to do this. I know that there are way better/cooler/useful (well maybe not useful) things to the machine than this, but I still can't get over it.

As far as actually using the machine, I mostly have just used it for internet so far, but I did download Google Chrome (far and away the best browser out there) and Spotify. Yeah, not the most exciting thing, but its my new favorite thing and I just wanted to write about it.

Getting things started

I normally haven't had any desire to blog or share many things online outside of posting stuff on Twitter or Facebook, but for whatever reason, I've decided that it's something that I'd like to do now.

I'll probably be focusing on my favorite sports teams (Temple University, Phills and Sixers), the stock market (which I have recently become very intrigued by), food (I love to eat) and some gambling/sport betting adventures.

I'm going to start off today by going into a little about my new found excitement for the stock market. I have been watching the market with some regularity for a few years now (since I starting working in 2008) but I did not decided to buy individual stocks until last fall when I purchased Apple (AAPL) and Baidu (BIDU) in October 2011.

What made me finally jump into the stock market? Two things.

First, I was getting fed up with the interest rate of my savings account. I was making less than 1% a year and figured that as long as I could make a few bucks in the market (or didn't lose a lot), it would be worth the risk.

Secondly, as I am a slight tech junkie, I was watching the Apple presser for what turned out to be the iPhone 4S, and before they got to the announcement of the new phone Apple revealed that they were now the number one computer in the country. That really struck a chord with me, I always knew that Apple was a very popular product, but to become the best selling in the country, I found that fascinating.

At this point, it seemed stupid to not buy stock in Apple. The have the best selling computer in the country, and they are going to be putting out a new iPhone- seemed like dollar signs to me.

So the next day, I was able to purchase AAPL at $368 and my obsession with the stock market had begun (I also bought BIDU at $109). Being as compulsive as I am, I check the prices of my stocks quite frequently thought-out the day and it has become one of my favorite things to do.

My new obsession was off to a great start as AAPL was up over $50 in less than two weeks!! I almost couldn't believe how fast AAPL was making money, it just seemed like everyday the stock would go up. But while I do not know much about the market, I know that things like this don't last forever or happen all the time, as AAPL proceeded to lose about half of those earnings over the following weeks. But the damage was done, and I was all in on the stock market, and needed to add to my portfolio.

So about a six or seven weeks after I bought AAPL and BIDU, I decided to take an adventure with Bank of America (BAC), Dollar Financial (DLLR), and Netflix (NFLX). Following shortly after that, I also decided to buy Mitek Systems (MITK) and Google (GOOG).

Netflix (NFLX) was one of my more interesting purchases, as around the summer 2011 it was trading at $300 but it dropped very quickly after the announcement a price hike and Qikster, which in turn resulted in over a million subscribers leaving. So by the time I was ready to purchase NFLX, I was able to grab it at a great price of $70.

Over first five to six weeks after I bought Netflix nothing too drastic was happening with the stock (which I was fine with), but when they announced that they crushed their quarterly report in mid-January the stock shot up to around $130 (!!), making Netflix the hottest stock on the market for a few weeks.

But shortly after this new found enthusiasm for Netflix, it started to lose some money and seemed to be on a steady decline for the better part of the month. I knew that the Netflix resurgence wouldn't last forever, but I didn't have a good feeling about this one and was questioning if I should sell the stock or not. And never having sold stock before, I wasn't sure if I should keep holding on, or take the money and run.

I was tinkering with the idea of selling for a while, but after reading this article from Seeking Alpha, my mind was made up. It was time to dump NFLX.

So first thing this morning I sold my shares of Netflix and cashed out.
Time will tell if this was the right decision or not, but for the time being, I am happy with the decision I made.