I always had a love/hate relationship with trading stocks. I loved it from the moment I opened my first brokerage account, almost 15 years ago. But I kept losing money trading stocks for years.

I would buy hot stocks, feel good when they went up for a while, but sooner or later there was always a crash. And I always sold at a loss or I got out at the price that I bought. That was the painful part of trading stocks. 

But no matter how much I lost and how much time I stepped away from the market, I always loved publicly traded stocks. To me, there’s something special about the stock market. I don’t know exactly what the charm is, but I think it’s the accessibility.

In theory, any person can participate and make money by simply buying a stock at the right time. Investing and trading have the characteristics of a game; gambling, excitement, and solving problems.