Google Bops Along
If you had asked me a few days ago what I did on September 22, 2011, I would have had no idea. But now I know exactly what I did.
See, I still have the discount brokerage account that I opened after I graduated from college even though I don’t transact in it anymore because I opened a different one after I got married and had kids. When we did that, however, I didn’t bother transferring or selling any of the stocks in it because doing so would have incurred fees or taxes. So that account has just bopped along for the past 15 years, and I check in on it every now and again to make sure no one has confiscated my property.
Well, I logged in not long ago and was shocked by the balance. It was a lot higher than I remembered it. So I double-clicked and discovered what a massive year it’s been for Alphabet, nee Google, because of its recent breakthroughs in AI.
But I didn’t remember buying that much Google.
Turns out I hadn’t. On September 22, 2011, I’d bought a little Google. I wondered why I might have done that, so I googled “Google stock September 22, 2011” and was served this story about the company being investigated for its anti-competitive practices. Then I remembered that I was at an investing conference that day and that Google stock was down because people thought the government might break it up.
So I bought…at what has turned out to be a cost basis of $13 per share.
This isn’t to brag; this is a lot of luck. But my experience is that luck in investing tends to find you if you bet on fantastic business models and let them bop along.
– Tim
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