Throwing away money
I just took my first foray into the world of throwing away money. I invested in the stock market. I know that it may not seem like the greatest time to start throwing money into something that has been on a steady downward fall for the past year, but I think now is one of the best times to invest if you can.
Why would you invest when times are tough? Because they're going to get better. The market always gets better. We've had a couple of recessions in recent years, but things always turn around. It makes sense to invest when the market is low, because (at least in the long term) it has nowhere to go but up. Things will definitely get worse before they get better but investing when things are bad leaves you open to making a fair amount of money when things get better.
Of course, there's no guarantees and there's always the possibility of the economy collapsing and having everything that was invested be gone forever. I'm thinking that if that happens, we'll be in deeper shit anyway and some lost money in the stock market is going to be the least of my worries.
On top of investing in a falling market, I took it a step further and invested in a company whose stock has been quite a bit of a roller coaster lately. Sprint Nextel. They're a failing wireless provider (in my opinion) and not something that most would consider investing in right now. My thinking is that they're too large to actually fail, and that they'll be bought out instead or rebound when the 4g wireless market takes off. Either way, hopefully that will push Sprint near the current assumed stock value of around $8 a share.
Sprint has Xohm, and I think that once they and Clearwire (both 4g providers) merge and the 4g market takes hold that there could be big gains in store. 4g is too ahead of it's time to be viable or helping Sprint in any way right now since 3g adoption among both wireless providers and customers is still pretty low. AT&T just revamped and reworked their 3g network this year, making it extremely more available and the iPhone 3g is what I believe is driving that. 3g is in its prime right now, and it will take some time for 4g to come into the scene. Sprint is the only provider even seriously working on a 4g network right now and having Xohm merge with Clearwire is going to make the service quite available when it's ready.
Ultimately it all boils down to my assumption and predictions of what may happen, which are extremely uneducated and unreliable. There's always the possibility that Sprint could fold (it's still bleeding customers and has a ton of debt), but I think that with a customer base of around 50 million subscribers and highly used Nextel network it would be a very likely and ideal candidate for a buyout. Who would buy them? Verizon, I would think. They're the only major provider in the US that also uses the CDMA network so the migration for customers would likely be as simple as moving billing information over and should not result in network or hardware-related changes.
Even though I have little invested, it's fun. I like having a stake in a company, especially one that I think is working hard to turn around the poor consumer confidence level that they've had for years. I legitimately believe that Sprint Nextel as the ability to turn things around and become a major player in the wireless industry again, which is why I've chosen to "bet" money on it. Whether they will actually be able to turn things around and start saving or making money (like they believe they can do by 2009) is anyone's guess, though.
Why would you invest when times are tough? Because they're going to get better. The market always gets better. We've had a couple of recessions in recent years, but things always turn around. It makes sense to invest when the market is low, because (at least in the long term) it has nowhere to go but up. Things will definitely get worse before they get better but investing when things are bad leaves you open to making a fair amount of money when things get better.
Of course, there's no guarantees and there's always the possibility of the economy collapsing and having everything that was invested be gone forever. I'm thinking that if that happens, we'll be in deeper shit anyway and some lost money in the stock market is going to be the least of my worries.
On top of investing in a falling market, I took it a step further and invested in a company whose stock has been quite a bit of a roller coaster lately. Sprint Nextel. They're a failing wireless provider (in my opinion) and not something that most would consider investing in right now. My thinking is that they're too large to actually fail, and that they'll be bought out instead or rebound when the 4g wireless market takes off. Either way, hopefully that will push Sprint near the current assumed stock value of around $8 a share.
Sprint has Xohm, and I think that once they and Clearwire (both 4g providers) merge and the 4g market takes hold that there could be big gains in store. 4g is too ahead of it's time to be viable or helping Sprint in any way right now since 3g adoption among both wireless providers and customers is still pretty low. AT&T just revamped and reworked their 3g network this year, making it extremely more available and the iPhone 3g is what I believe is driving that. 3g is in its prime right now, and it will take some time for 4g to come into the scene. Sprint is the only provider even seriously working on a 4g network right now and having Xohm merge with Clearwire is going to make the service quite available when it's ready.
Ultimately it all boils down to my assumption and predictions of what may happen, which are extremely uneducated and unreliable. There's always the possibility that Sprint could fold (it's still bleeding customers and has a ton of debt), but I think that with a customer base of around 50 million subscribers and highly used Nextel network it would be a very likely and ideal candidate for a buyout. Who would buy them? Verizon, I would think. They're the only major provider in the US that also uses the CDMA network so the migration for customers would likely be as simple as moving billing information over and should not result in network or hardware-related changes.
Even though I have little invested, it's fun. I like having a stake in a company, especially one that I think is working hard to turn around the poor consumer confidence level that they've had for years. I legitimately believe that Sprint Nextel as the ability to turn things around and become a major player in the wireless industry again, which is why I've chosen to "bet" money on it. Whether they will actually be able to turn things around and start saving or making money (like they believe they can do by 2009) is anyone's guess, though.
Comments