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How I made a 36% return my first year investing in stocks without knowing what I was doing

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You hear stories about day traders making millions and living the dream with all their fancy cars. Well I tried that. It ended with me losing $8,000 in one month on penny stocks. So if you want day trading advice, please stop reading this. I did however, figure a simple easy way to invest in really high paying dividend stocks like AXP, BAC, STM, KHC, ect. How did I find out these stocks were a good investment? None other than the great Warren Buffett. See Buffett publicly posts his portfolio here and his latest buys and sells here . I was able to invest in BAC and SYF almost the same time Buffett did. I am still new to investing, and have learned a lot to make myself feel confident to make a few investments with my own research. While I am learning, I still want my money to grow for me, so why not follow the most successful investor who has ever lived? Over the past 5 years, I have put $5,500 per year in my IRA Roth and contributed to my matching 401k for m...
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Bracketology: March 10, 2020

Here is my take on what the selection committee will decide. A few high level differences I have with Joe Lunardi and others bracket: 1)The Big 12 has the top 2 seeds but the rest of the pack is fairly mediocre. I think a lot of bracketologists are over-seeding West Virginia because the committee had them at a 2 seed a month ago when they revealed their current bracket. At that time West Virginia was 18-4 with solid wins over Ohio St, Texas Tech, Texas, Wichita St, Rhode Island and Northern Iowa. Since then WVU is 3-6 with a bad loss in OT @TCU and a great win at home vs Baylor. The also lost to bubble teams Oklahoma (twice) and @Texas. Not saying these are bad losses but these are opportunities that they let slip away. Also, most of their quality wins early in the year are now bubble teams with the exception being Ohio St which I believe is a strong 5 seed. So their top 2 wins are OSU and Baylor at home which are good wins, but when you compare this to the teams I have on the 5-6 s...
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Bracketology

For anyone who is a fan of college basketball, you know what time of the year it is. March Madness baby! Here are my picks for how I think the committee will seed all of the teams Let me know what you think!
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How to get started investing in Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies

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Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing a friend of mine Rob Kishi on Bitcoin and other Crytocurrencies. During this interview Rob gave us an insight on the basics of cryptocurrency and revealed that his strategy was to hold most of his stake in cryptos instead of trying to sell and make a quick buck. Rob's strategy makes sense for two reasons: If you truly believe that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the future, why sell? Back in November of 2013, Bitcoin went from $350-$1,242. Imagine if you owned 10 Bitcoin back then that you bought at $350 a piece. If you sold all at $1,242, you could cash in with almost a $9,000 profit. That sounds great, but if you instead were to hold on to that same 10 Bitcoin, it would be worth $174,899 as of right now. That is more than a $170,000 profit.  If you hold your stake for longer than a year, you typically will pay 2.5x less taxes on your gains.That means you can reinvest more money each year and continue to gr...
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What I learned from buying my first house

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Should you buy a house right now? Quick answer: probably not.  Buying a house is an amazing feeling. When I bought my first house, I hardly got any sleep the first night because I was so excited. I felt free from having to pay a landlord and excited for my investment. I had optimistic plans of design a killer backyard with a fire pit, garden, and volley ball court (the fire pit actually happened).  I was lucky that I bought my home in 2011, when the housing market had pretty much bottomed out. My home has over doubled in value since I bought it, although I did sell it in 2014 for a 40% return on my investment. Do I wish I would have held on a little longer? Probably, but at the time I sold it I was living in San Francisco and managing a home in Washington was not easy. My dad was helping me out, but it was becoming stressful for him. So I decided to take a $40,000 profit, gave my dad $5,000 of it to take my mom on vacation and get out while I was ...
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Litecoin up 100% in 24 hours?! Is it legit?

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For those of you who don't know, I put a small amount of money into Litecoin about 6 days ago. At the time I bought it at $92 a coin. Within days it skyrocketed up to $160, so I sold it thinking I made a great decision even though it's founder Charlie Lee said this was just the beginning. Litecoin has been compared to bitcoin like silver has been to gold. It was designed to be a faster transaction, and a currency that would allow a consumer to purchase products more effectively than Bitcoin, which is considered more of a storage device (i.e gold). I read a few things that spooked me, so I sold. Sure enough, Lite coin rose another 100%+ to over $370. Boy, I wish I would have held. All I can do now is be patient and hope that it drops back down to a reasonable price so I can by more of it. I would recommend following Charlie Lee on twitter. He is outspoken on Litecoin and what he says affect's the market.
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Should you invest in a Roth IRA?

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Back when I was 19, I read (skimmed) a book called 'The Slight Edge' by Jeff Olsen. This book talked about all of the little things you do in life that ultimately compound over years to make you a better (or worse) person. In this book there was also a chart showing the advantages of starting an IRA Roth earlier rather than later. A link to the chart can be found here . This chart shows two people. One who started contributing $2,000 per year to their IRA Roth at age 24, and another who started contributing $2,000 at age 30. The one who started at age 24 stopped paying any money towards it at age 30 (6 years), while the other consistently contributed $2,000 from age 30 to age 62 (32 years). Now at the end when they are both 65, they have almost the same amount of money. This chart is estimating an ambitious 11.2% year over year growth, which will not always happen. If you want to calculate your earnings on a lower % year-year growth, check out this calculator...
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Why I just bought 2 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class B Stock

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This quick story was developed from a blog I posted a few days ago called 'How I made a 36% return my first year investing in stocks without knowing what I was doing.' I thought the story might inspire some other young professionals who are looking at getting involved in investing. I posted it on Linked In, Twitter, Reddit, ect. The feedback I received from it was surprisingly good, and there was one comment on Reddit that changed the way I now think about investing: Once I read this, I immediately had an "oh duh" moment. I had been trying to follow Buffet's strategies for the past year and a half to learn and grow my income, how could I have missed this simple opportunity? If you buy stake in Berkshire Hathaway's call A Shares for an easy $294,385.34, you get to attend his annual share holders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska at no charge. Here you will get to meet with 40,000 others in CenturyLink Center and hear Warren Buffett and his partner ...
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