Today I turned 18 years old…

So what did I do on my eighteenth birthday? Yes, you guessed correctly, I bought $1500 worth of stock. Since my graduation (before actually, but the plan was not too realistic then) I’ve wanted to buy stock. Unfortunately, one must be 18 to buy stock, and I was 17 back then. So I waited, all the while planning out which stock I should buy. I decided on SanDisk (SNDK), Electronic Arts (ERTS), and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO). All three were falling fairly consistently and nearing their lowest valleys in quite some time, so they seemed like good choices.

Since last night after midnight was technically July 24, I tried signing up at e*trade. However, I could not sign up at the site, even after midnight. So I did some more research about online brokers and decided TD Ameritrade was probably a better choice. Luckily, I was able to sign up at said site after 1:00 am. However, after completing the sign-up process, I found out my account was frozen, as identity checks are performed on every new account and I have no identity (well, at the time I didn’t). Another setback.

I set my alarms for 8:00 am but ignored them anyways. So around 10:00 am I called my mom asking her about the information need by TD Ameritrade. I rode my bike to OfficeMax and faxed the necessary information.

Once I got home from the Max, I started my trading adventure. I purchased some shares of ERTS and SNDK. Then came the time for TTWO. Apparently, TD Ameritrade requires paying a special margin to buy TTWO stock. I have no idea what a margin is, so i decided to buy a different stock, one not affected by such margin. I remembered that a friend who knows a lot about stock trading has some Toyota (TM) shares, so I bought some of those.

The rest of the tarding involved watching the stock prices. Luckily, today was a great day for the stocks I bought (and most other stocks) so I made a profit of $23 (ignoring the $40 that went to TD Ameritrade as commissions). I can’t wait to see how my stock does tomorrow!

Later on today I played baseball. I couldnt hit the ball but made a leaping catch in the outfield and tagged someone out as home as the catcher. We lost by one run. Now I am going to eat some chicken wings and watch episodes of The Simpsons.