Interesting Investments (Pt 3)

"Blink.......little red circle......what are you dong there little red circle.......blink.......hey, you, little red circle! Why should I click on you? Why!?!. But little red circle, you know I can't leave you there. I have to click on you. But, but, but......"

That little red circle was my gateway drug. The lure of the little red circle is irresistible. You know you don't need to push it. It holds no value for you, but you can't leave it alone.

That little red circle was the notification on the E-Toro app on my new iPhone. But I had left the E-toro platform. What did it want?!?

So I clicked. It was a notification about a cryptocurrency Ripple ($XRP) that was being sued by the SEC in America. Why on Earth would I care about that?

As I read more I became intrigued by cryptocurrency. Having spent 10 years with IBM, I had a summary understanding of what crypto was, but not really how blockchain worked.

This was about to change in a big way!

The more I read, the more I wanted to know. I chased down Youtube videos and everyone was talking about crypto. I jumped on my phone and went to download an app and lo and behold, some years ago I had actually signed up for Coinspot - an Aussie crypto exchange. (The regret was instant that I didn't invest a few bucks at this stage!)

Into The Ether

Our family is kind of funny in that my parents, and Sarahs parents are divorced. That means Christmas day is alternated between the four parents. To cater for everyone, we often do Christmas before the 25th December. This year it was the 23rd at my sister Jac's house.

As usual, Christmas lunch was big, delicious, and accompanied with a few(!) drinks.

I was talking with my brother in law John and in the course of time investing came up. This was followed shortly by the topic of cryptocurrency. This had to be a sign, right? He was putting significant time, energy and finance into the block chain, and while Bitcoin was the main player, John told me all about Etherium.

I had gone from smoking a joint behind the shelter shed to dropping acid with Jim Morrison!

By this stage I had a much better understanding, decided to put some $200 into Etherium ($ETH) to see what would happen. At that stage the price of one $ETH token cost $841.6930756. I was the proud owner of 0.23526367 of a token! I was stoked!

Tweet Tweet Tweet

It seemed that most of the information and action was happening on Twitter, so I brushed the dust off, re-downloaded the app to my phone and reset my password. Talk about a stream of consciousness! There was a hell of a lot to digest so I started writing notes and in short time I had a hit list of coins that I thought I should invest in so I got to work.

Within a short time I had a small portfolio that included: Stellar ($XLM) Litecoin ($LTC) Cadarno ($ADA) Polkadot($DOT)

I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself. I was watching, waiting, hoping and praying for something to happen.....

And Then Came The Bull!

People often refer to trading being somewhat like being on a roller coaster, but the bull run at then end of 2020 felt much more like a tidal wave. I know of bull and bear markets from equities and paper trading, but the strength of the bull market for BTC and crypto was just intense! You can almost feel the crescendo of emotions held in millions of people as Bitcoin ($BTC) rose, a behemoth, seemingly unstoppable! For a new investor dabbling in cryptocurrency, this was a pretty indescribable, surreal experience. On one hand, knowing that you had some investment in this bull run, and the fact that you were currently making money hand over fist while drinking a cold beer and eating bbq food, you felt like the king of the world. You were unstoppable and, at this rate, you would definitely be retiring next year and travelling the world in your own private jet just like the rappers on TV! On the other hand, why didn't you put more in you goose!?!? The FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) was in full effect and all you want to do is pour your hard earned cash into this money making behemoth. Market cap had passed $1 trillion USD. Wow - that is a big number

Enter Youtube commentators...the good, the bad, and the....whatever This video is by one of my favourite commentators on Crypto Currency Jason Pizzino. I came across hime through the ASX Investor Youtube Channel and was immediately impressed by the down-to-Earth, "nopium, approach to investing.

Now while Jason wasn't offering lambos and luxury, he was offering some really sound approaches (NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR!) to investing based on the only signal we have - technical analysis and it really appealed to the LEAN Six Sigma Business Analyst side of me. I've been studying charts for 15 years in my day job - I just needed to switch gears to the markets.

And now we are here. We are into 2021 and I've started blogging (again!) I've got a small portfolio in the ASX, NASDAQ and CRYPTO and I'm currently ahead.

I'm going to try to keep my investments page up to date (when I can find a suitable format) but till then, be sure to check out the links in this page and follow me on Twitter petedeecrypto for all crypto and design related things or petesguitar for everything else

Right In The Hip Pocket (book)

Way back in 2015 I signed up to a nifty little service called Pocketbook. This service uses both desktop and mobile app to help you track your spending and more effectively budget. I find it fantastic for letting me see where we are spending and where we might be able to save a little more here and there. Setting up the app is really easy. All you need to do is download the app on your device (buttons will take you there)

Step 1

The first thing to do is to connect your bank accounts. It's really straight forward and secure. Don't worry, it won't steal all your hard earned dollars, it only reads from your accounts to translate your activity.

Step 2

This is where you can visualise your incoming and outgoing activity. You can filter by clicking on the chart columns, use the calendar to define date ranges and see both category and value groups of transactions

Step 3

This is where you can explore your through your activities, and categorise any that are not automatically categorised by the apps AI.

Step 4

And now you can get to the real guts of it. Start setting some spending limits by dollar amount in each category. The app will then give you a bit of a kick in the pants if you spend too much!

All in all, I really like the app. There is a whole lot of functionality that I have not gone into, including tax deductions (they have an app for that). It has undergone a facelift since 2015 and is a really nice interface.

If there was one improvement I wish they would make, it would be to update their web version. At the time of writing I don't believe they will be but it would be fantastic if they did.

Go get Pocketbook, save yourself some money and buy a t-shirt from My Threadless Store