Sunday, October 02, 2005

Volunteering

Yes, that's what I did yesterday, my first volunteering event in Seattle! It was quite interesting. We went to the Hillman House, organized by Multifaith Works. It is a house for AIDS/HIV victims. Most of the things I did were gardening work, but I also helped moving furniture around and talking to people.

One of the most interesting talks I had was with one of the residents there that spend his whole day doing penny stock trading. If you don't know what this is, well, I'll tell you that this is what is considered "forbidden" in all "how to win in stocks" books: pretty much the most risky side of the stock market.

Take an example of PTS Inc.. Their stocks currently are worth 0.008. Yes, 8 tenths of a cent. So why would you have a share that cost this little? Because if it goes up 1/10 of a cent it is more than 10% increase! You don't get that in your everyday stocks! However, they tend to be quite volatile. Jumping tenths of a cent up and down, requiring you to be quick and a little lucky to cash on these stocks.

The interesting thing is that it does fuel people's hopes. Most probably they will either end up losing a lot of money, or maybe they will just not make any money and keep themselves busy. The stock market is great at making people busy, because there is so much information you have to absorb to be able to get anywhere in this are...

Alright, time to continue getting some cleaning done here. And I'm getting hungry.

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