Better Have My Money: learning 'bout stocks so we all become rich
Hey friends!
Welcome to the latest edition of Better Have My Money, the newsletter for clueless stocks newbies. Yes, this is coming to you un poco late because I spent Monday in Manhattan Federal Court hanging out with Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels (read the play-by-play here or see me gesticulate wildly talking about when Sean Hannity's name was announced here) and I'm still playing life catch-up. Turns out working all day and then writing a newsletter at home doesn't work... well.
Better Have My Money got a bunch of new subscribers in the last week, so lemme just explain this newsletter for anyone new. Basically it's just a pun-filled rundown of the things I've learned that week from my own tiny brand new stock portfolio (from how to buy a share, to investing in weed stocks, to losing a bunch of money in weed stocks) and the things I'm still learning. If you have questions about stocks, hit reply and ask me! I'll try and answer in the future or maybe I will deem it too hard and forget it in my inbox. This is aimed at a super basic (but not pumpkin spice latte) level, more about making the world of stocks seem less scary to all of us, with bonus Rihanna gifs. I am not any kind of financial expert!
The benefit of not sending this til later in the week, is that my own stocks are looking much better right now — in large part thanks to the latest quarterly report by Netflix, released late Monday.
Quarterly reports! This email is getting sexy already! So basically, every quarter, public companies have to release financial information about how the business is doing, whether it's meeting goals and deadlines.
Confusing term of the week: "earnings season" - the times of the year when all the quarterly reports are released. It comes just a few weeks after the end of each quarter, so early to mid January, April, July and October.
And Netflix's (NFLX) was full of good news, such as this juicy opening line: "Revenue grew 43% year over year in Q1, the fastest pace in the history of our streaming business." It also noted a bigger-than-expected jump in subscribers. Anyway, cue Wall Street getting REALLY EXCITED and sending Netflix soaring.
Skimming the transcript of the earnings call (when shareholders and media can ring in and listen to company directors give a powerpoint presentation over the phone, basically) from Netflix reminded me of how dude orientated Wall Street is. No women spoke on this call! But six men did.
Looking at pictures of Netflix's management online show a whole long list of white men, with just one female director, who is in charge of HR. The board is a lil more gender split (11 people, four of whom are women) but also super white. Shout out to Susan Rice, the former ambassador, national security advisor and black woman, who was literally appointed to the board only last month.
This is obviously not only Netflix like this AT ALL (in fact I suspect having four women on the board is considered groundbreaking), but damn it's hard to find public companies w diverse management huh ... do you know any good ones? It's making the White House Internship program look diverse.
Also ppl love doing this for Netflix, but this article made me *emoji eyes* — if in 2007 you'd invested $1000 in Netflix, it'd be worth more than $102,000 on Tuesday. Look, in 2007 I was 21 and working at a diner in Durango, Colorado, so it was UNLIKELY I was gonna drop $1000 on Netflix stocks, but still. I did enjoy watching Netflix jump 9% on Tuesday.
Here is my Ally stock collection:
Here's my weed stocks on Robinhood, which are doing soooo much better this week (yes I am still down $100).
I have my stocks split between Robinhood and Ally for no good reason except that I discovered Robinhood, where it costs $0 to buy a stock, after I'd already bought some at Ally (and I dig Ally’s interface and it’s connected to my checking and savings accounts).
If you want to give Robinhood a whirl — and literally, it costs nothing, and you'll pay zero fees to buy stock so why da faq wouldn't you — then you can also use my referral code, which will give both of us a free stock (I have no idea how this work, cause it claims stock like Apple (AAPL), so I assume you just get like a tiny percent? This free app ain't giving us a stock currently worth $178). This is the first time I've put a referral link in, not sure how I feel about it yet, thoughts welcome.
If you didn't get a chance to file your taxes by last night, the deadline for filing them yourself, it got extended til tonightthanks to issues with the IRS e-filing site yesterday. Buying some stocks to play around with might be a rad thing to spend your return on. Rather than buying skincare, buy stocks in Ulta (ULTA), which just had a good Q1 report. Rather than buying new clothes or other crap, how about stock in H&M (HM-B) or Alibaba (BABA), the huge Chinese e-commerce site. Rather than buying a plane ticket, try JetBlue stock cause it's down right now. Or maybe just save it cause, a new study showed 42% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved.
But definitely use some of your return or stocks money towards buying girl scout cookies from Troop 6000, a girl scout group for girls who live in homeless shelters in New York. You can buy cookies online from one of the girl's here.
BHMM testimonials:
From @Ginny Tonkin: "The newsletter I never knew I needed" — bless you Ginny, turns out a lot of us need help to understand wth is happening.
From @mazsidahemed: "If like me, you fall silent whenever friends start speaking about their stock portfolios, because you don't know the difference between a stock & a bond, you need to signup for @ambiej's newsletter and get your money in order! https://tinyletter.com/amberjamieson" — I can't wait for Mazin to tell us what the difference is between a stock and a bond, cause I still don't know (guess I got my confusing term of the week already organize for next Monday).
Do you have a friend who likes Samoa cookies and making money? Forward this along to them — or tweet nice things about it.
See You Next Monday (see what I did there).