I received 300 dollars as a birthday present, so I decided to use it to purchase a stock. I have and ESA opened for my daughter (I have put no money in it for more than 2 years) so I decided I would use this account to buy my first stock. I looked around a bit, and decided to buy Clorox (Symbol: CLX). Why? No real reason. I just think that it is a good brand, and that it will do well over time. I think that the economy is heading for a “soft” patch, and that people will be shining up the things they already have as opposed to buying new. Clorox offers a STRONG brand name, and I like their products. I compared them to other offerings in their sector, and this is the stock I chose. (Really, it’s a guess…) I hope that it does well, but I really just wanted to learn about the mechanisms of my brokerage, etc. I used a limit order and bought 5 shares at 58.28. (Looking at the market RIGHT now, the stock is down a few pennies.) This will be a LONG time hold, probably on the order of 10 plus YEARS. I will probably put a chart up on the right hand page tomorrow, to track its progress. I know that it is only one stock, out of thousands, but I think I can learn some stuff just by watching it go up and down, and because I actually own a tiny bit of it, I will be more inclined to really pay attention. I like to have a vested interest in the things that I am watching. Take a little league game. Have you ever watched a little league game that your child was not playing in? Pretty boring, huh? But, if your kid is playing, it’s as if the game is part of the World Series. Same principle here. I will be more likely (much more, in fact) to actually WATCH the stock, now that I own a bit of it. (Please note: This post is just for information. In no way do I actually think that what I did in purchasing this stock has anything to do with what was REALLY good for my financial condition. I still want to build my emergency fund, put money in my Roth IRAs in mutual funds, etc. This is just “play” money, and I wanted to do something a bit outside my own personal “box”.)
