Wandering Wordsmith

Keeping finance in perspective is important. As I find myself in more technical areas, its always good to remember that, at best, the info will only appeal to a very specific audience. Many people will never buy an option or trade forex or pick up an economic book and read it cover to cover. That’s why its important to keep writing beginner’s content – it keeps you and your writing from becoming too niche.

My latest for Investopedia is a pretty general one, but they can be just as challenging as the niche articles because you can’t make assumptions about the reader. Most people coming to this article probably decided just to take a chance on the title. I hope I didn’t disappoint.

Without further ado:

6 Dangerous Moves For First-Time Investors
Thanks to online discount brokerages, anyone with an Internet connection and a bank account can be up and trading stocks within a week. This ease of access is great because it encourages more people to explore investing for themselves, rather than depending on mutual funds or money managers. However, there are some common mistakes that first time investors have to be aware of before they try picking stocks like Buffett or shorting like Soros.

Jumping In Head First
The basics of investing are quite simple in theory – buy low and sell high. In practice, however, you have to know what is low and what is high in a market where everything hinges on different readings of a variety of ratios and metrics. What is high to the seller is considered low (enough) to the buyer in any transaction, so you can see how different conclusions can be drawn from the same market information. Because of the relative nature of the market, it is important to study up a bit before jumping in.

As always, you can read the rest of the article on Investopedia – 6 Dangerous Moves For First-Time Investors.

I’ve always enjoyed looking at the lives of the great empire builders and reading about how they did what they did. I’ve been slowly researching and writing a bio on every major entrepreneur for Investopedia.

The latest one, Walt Disney, is up. One of the hardest things about this project is trying to stay within a readable word count. These people have books dedicated to them, so it is challenging to do them justice with a 1200 word limit.

Without further ado:

Walt Disney: How Entertainment Became An Empire
Walt Disney is one of the most powerful companies, in one of the most powerful sectors of any economy: entertainment. Before it became a $60 billion dollar company, with interests spanning the globe, Disney was more closely associated with the vision of the man after whom it was named. It was this vision that laid the groundwork for the company to become the media giant it is today. In this article we’ll look at the rise of Walt Disney, both the man and the company, and the lessons found there, for entrepreneurs today.

Setting Forth, Again and Again
Like many creative talents, Walt Disney started his career working for others. In 1919, Walt was back from driving for the American Ambulance Corps in World War I, and looking for work as an artist. He found it at Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he met and befriended Ubbe Iwerks. Iwerks proved to be one of the most talented animators in the world and a key to Walt’s later success.

As always, you can read the rest of the article on Investopedia – Walt Disney: How Entertainment Became An Empire.

I’ll always enjoy economics, even though it often too theoretical to be useful. That said, I find the free market thinkers to be much clearer in their writing and much more practical. I wrote the following article as a bit of free market cheerleading while still trying to keep it fair. Although I am not free market to the core, I do find myself aligning with that school of thought more often than not.

4 Misconceptions About Free Market Economics
Economics has a bad reputation for being an imprecise and contradictory science. Former U.S. President Harry S. Truman famously wanted a one-armed economist, so he didn’t have to hear “on one hand” followed by “on the other hand.” Unfortunately, economics and the policies it inspires, impacts every corner of the globe. In this article, we’ll look at four of the most dangerous misconceptions that have hounded free market economists, since the days of Adam Smith.

Inflation is Inevitable
It seems like inflation is a natural phenomenon; your father paid a quarter for a movie and your grandfather paid $3 for a suit, but you pay $5 for a cup of coffee. The ugly truth is that there is nothing natural about inflation. Inflation is a product of printing presses and, worse yet, operates as an additional tax upon people’s earnings. Inflation can help select groups in the short-term, for example, a farmer might command a higher price and make more profit, until the price of other supplies catches up. However, it helps only the government, in the long term, by giving it more funds to allocate while also lessening the real value of its debts.

As always, you can read the rest at Investopedia – 4 Misconceptions About Free Markets