Wish me luck, I need it!

Well, it is official I am now an official investor. Pretty much all my life I have read about stocks and heard stories about stocks. “The DOW is up” or the “DOW is down”… Reason this… Reason that… I have often wondered what the best stock would be to buy and what it would be like to be an investor. I could of written my thoughts down on the matter, but that seemed rather hollow. So instead I actually decided to put money on the line.  Unfortunately, I don’t have much money to invest into stocks (hello, I still got a family to feed), but thanks to my usertesting jobs I was able to scrap together $250. So here is what I chose:

F – Ford Motor Company – I bought this stock at $13 dollars a share because I think it is a large cap (big company) stock that is highly under rated. The news lately is about higher MPG vehicles, and I think that is good, but I think no matter what people are still going to need trucks and the truck for the USA is going to be  Ford.

FORD – Forward Industries Inc.  – I bought this small cap (small company) fund for $2.96 a share. They are a business that makes cases, like suitcases and medical cases. I found this company by accident looking for Ford Motor Company, but then I read their financial statements and thought that they might be a good buy. I think as people start having to take care of themselves more at home due to rising medical costs, they are going to need to be organized, and a good way to be organized is to have a medical case. Everyone I know that has to take pills on a regular basis always has a medical kit.

CAMP – CalAmp Corp. – Another small cap fund. These guys are into making the technology possible so that satellites can communicate with each other. Networking satellites together I think is going to be a big thing. Satellites already talk to each other now, but if they could network together and create a mesh technology I can see lots of different useful applications. So at $3.85 per share I thought I’d give it a whirl.

SILA – Gold American Mining Corp. – You might of heard the hype about the price of gold going up and may think “Oh, John is going with the hype,” and you would be wrong. The reason why is owning gold company stocks is nothing like investing in gold itself. Gold American is a very small gold mining company that has three mines and to the best of my knowledge has not yet found any gold. Do to this fact the company is bleeding capital big time, pretty much to the point where the stock is almost worthless. I bought 1250 shares at .035 per share. Odds are I will lose it with this company, but if they do find gold I could be seeing a very nice return. A very risky stock, but I wanted to see what riding a penny stock would be like.

So there you have it, my stock picks backed with my own investment money.These stock picks are purely my own ideas and I was not compensated by anyone to write this post. My plan is to play around with them for a year (good or bad in a year you will find out the results). Unfortunately, at $9.95 commission per trade I can’t trade them back and forth too much, but I am also not in this for the long term. It should be an interesting adventure.