I like finance and learning about it, used to write about this topic here as well. I was thinking about getting back into the topic when I stumbled upon substack. Which is a platform for writers. I thought I might try this out and start a little experiment.
My real long term investment plan is really simple, buy an index fund and hold it. The main goal for my investment is to work on my pension. Long term boring stuff, which to my mind is a good thing.
On the other hand, a more active approach can ben fun as well, and very hard to do. As well as the fact most people with an active approach lose money or underperform a simple index fund.
But I am going to test this myself with paper short term (day)trading. And to give Substack a go I set it up there.
Researching the topic of day trading this reddit came up, and made a lot of sense. So I took this as a starting point for my own adventures.
Keep in mind that nothing on here or on my Substack should be taken as investment advice, please do your own research and due diligence, or consult a professional.
With this warning out of the way, I will outline the idea. The credit card hedgefund is an experiment to see if I can make a profit while actively trading my portfolio. The name comes from the budget I set myself to start out with, my credit card limit of € 3500.
It’s all done on paper, no real trades or real money is at stake. I might do that later on or try other strategies but time will tell.
I need to trade 3 months and make 100 trades and be profitable. There are some more specifications, but read all about it on my Substack.
Tag: writing
Cultivating ideas and creative resources in music making
As soon as inspiration hits, you want to make sure the idea doesn’t evaporate into thin air. I have talked about working on your skills routinely which will lead to periods of inspiration and productiveness. Everything feels like its effortless.
Make no mistakes, this is the direct result of all the hard work and sharpening your skills. Showing up regularly and putting in the time. As with anything you will get better with practice.
A lot of ideas get left behind. You simply don’t have time finalizing all these great ideas. It therefore makes sense making notes and sketches of all these ideas in a way they form the future working stock. For all the days things don’t flow effortlessly.
There are a lot of ways of locking in ideas for future use. You can write them down, record them on your phone, sketch the essence. The most important thing is that you can remember the initial idea and work on it later on.
I have had a lot of failures in getting a structure set up for getting ideas down for future reference. I settled for pen & paper, advantages over digital forms are the physical actions and ingraining it in the brain.
But when reading it weeks or months later a lot of the time I could not make out what I originally set out to do. Not a big problem as it always has a starting point in it somewhere. But it kind of took away the enthusiasm.
So I opted for a format, a standardized way of writing ideas down and making sure I knew what I had set out to do. I start with giving the idea a title. Then I write down the concept, and the technical side of things. Which tools to use and how to use them. Then I set the length , speed and other characteristics of the song. Last but not least I draw the song in a time line fashion, breaks drops and other things.
In that way I have way more detail and I can work on the idea while writing it down. I can then do preparations and recording later on with more focus.
It has greatly helped my creative proces, as with anything, this way of doing things suits my personality and workflow. It’s just to give you an idea what might work. It took a while for me to get there, bit experimentation will get you there and is half the fun.
Zero
Back to zero, this lockdown for me is a forced rethink of what I need to do, or love to do. I have had a forced reset after my brain injury and after a few years I have a pretty solid base. And I got into a rhythm again. I sometimes forget to focus on the goals I have set after my return to the ‘real world’.
After adjusting to the lockdown and getting my head around it, I have spent some time going tru my notes and thoughts just after my revalidation. It was very much focussed around learning and getting some old ideas done. Mostly focussed around creativity and music. It’s has been hard getting started on those things for some reason. This part of my goals has been overshadowed by the day to day stuff I need to do. So I am now need to set some time for it.
This new crisis has also made me think we as a society need a reset, a bold start from scratch, back to zero.
It has also shown the fragility of our system and the need to rethink a large part of it. For me a lot needs to get back to zero. Start to rethink the whole idea of how we need to organize society and how we do things.
The focus on economic growth and keeping big business happy is long overdue. The metrics we use for calculating our output is one of the past. The cost of every crisis lands on the weakest shoulders. Most people haven’t really recovered from the financial crisis of 2008 and are now here. It might seem as if there was a recovery but most people just got back to a level of were they were in 2008.
The main problem is the inability for most people to get there financial situation more stable, workers rights have steadily been downgraded, the gig economy is not one that benefits most workers. And thus most people. Combining this with the every growing privatizing of healthcare , utilities and so on it’s a risk cocktail that has again landed on the same group of people.
The risk for society as a whole has gone up as well, the governments around the world have stepped in at an enormous cost for the future , all in a all in bet for quick recovery. Which might not happen.
So while this is all pretty gloomy it also gives us as a opportunity to force a few long overdue changes. The most important is the mindset about how we measure the wealth in our society. It needs to be a new mix of economic growth , health and happiness of the people and nature. A focus more on the quality of life and things rather than just things and masses of them.
It’s just a thought but these levels of leverage on financial , environmental and human risk our current system is very much unsustainable. Hopefully this new crisis will give way to forward thinking and real problem solving. I for one hope for the best.
Rethinking the blog
Well I have been absent with blog posts for a while now. Last post was November 2019 and we are well underway in 2020 in the meantime.
So what’s up, well I have drifted a bit from what my original idea for the blog was. My personal interests in finance, music , running and art. The main idea was to write whenever I felt like it and keep it a bit diversified. I got caught up in the personal finance part of it all. Mainly because there are so many cool ideas and I tried incorporating all that in my blog.
Well that generated more posts but not a lot of interesting ones. So I am stopping all series, which don’t add to get people thinking about things and just state facts, like the dividend and portfolio updates. Lot’s of other people are doing a much better job on those topics than I do. It also means I don’t feel any pressure (totally self imposed offcourse) to keep a monthly schedule and post stuff for the sake of it.
It’s a bit of a re-focus if you will and a drive in writing more meaningful pieces than just following a format. Let’s see where it takes me.
Writing really helps
Writing seems to really help me sorting out my thoughts and get a clear view. Being unable to do basic problem solving I now write everything down. Mostly on paper.
I also work like this when writing my blogs. I make notes and then work on them over and over again. I can manage these writing sessions pretty well, and they are relaxing.
I am not yet very good at it, but it seems like a nice activity to expand. It can be done almost everywhere , on my own time and when I have enough energy to do it.
As this blog seems like a nice but bit ancient way to get my thoughts out there I will go forward and try to at least write something once a week. I don’t know If that’s a pace I can keep up but it’s worth a try. Only thing to figure out next is how to get anyone to read my ramblings.