You’ll notice a new tab on the site called “Score­board”. Basi­cally, I’m shar­ing my invest­ments, so you can see for your­self whether I know any­thing about the sub­jects I feel con­fi­dent enough to write about. It will allow you, fair reader, to judge my exper­tise and motives. Its a ges­ture of open­ness and account­abil­ity that I’d like to be a hall­mark of this site, and I don’t think you’ll find any­thing like this in main­stream media com­men­tary. I’m not going to say how much I’ve invested because I’m not com­fort­able with reveal­ing the extent of my poverty, but know­ing when and for how much I opened and closed posi­tions should be suf­fi­cient to make your own judgments.

I made the first trade of my life a few weeks ago. I bought shares in SLV, an exchange traded fund (ETF) that owns a pool of sil­ver. It is sup­posed to track the price of sil­ver while giv­ing the added con­ve­nience of being able to be sold at a mouse click and not hav­ing stor­age costs. I was promptly taught a les­son in mar­ket tim­ing; as of yes­ter­day, my posi­tion was down 5%. I got some of that back today, but that is irrel­e­vant. I took the posi­tion to hold for a period of 1–5+ years, and I’m still feel­ing confident.

Here are the rea­sons I think this is a good invest­ment. Read the rest of this entry →