Budding Investment Genius

I am getting ready for a new hire training class. We sell newsletters for an investment research company. I am not all that smart in the ways of investing so I always try and mess around and learn more before a new class.

We are super lucky because we have access to all of the information that the company provides and I have that at my disposal for the training groups. Yahoo! I set up a mock portfolio with the companies I do business with. Thanks to my training access I am having fun and learning a lot about the market. I am really pumped because it was easy to set up the mock portfolio online and it is even easier to track it's success.

I set up the mock portfolio on Monday and as of today I am up about $700. that is pretty good for a couple of days. I added 1 stock today and that makes my total "investment" just over $19K. That is a return on my "investment" of about 3.5% in just 3 days. I think that is pretty great. I'd be willing to take that - especially in this wildly volatile market.

Now I am planning our retirement. Let's see... If I can make $700 every 3 days and there are 365 days of the year... that means I will "earn" $84,700 in the next year. I guess that is not really realistic because the market is not open every day of the year. There are about 20 days of the month that are business days and then probably another 15 days that are holidays... I will do my new calculation on an average of about 18.75 work days each month for a total of 225 days in the year. Now with that said, here is my much more realistic estimated "return" of $52,500. Not too shabby. I guess I can't retire on that unless I am moving to a box on 5th and Main.. An option but I think I'll pass for now.