Updates (April)

April was the month when I finally decided to sell my stocks. Micron stocks surprisingly increased in the middle of April to the value of approximately $25.25 per stock so I made a quick decision and sold all my MU stocks immediately. After a while it was clear that I it was a good step as MU stock reduced in value again. The stocks of the other two companies Nokia and Ariad Pharmaceuticals kept decreasing, especially Ariad. Hence, my profit significcantly dropped.

Below is the chart of my final profit and stocks:

Nokia (NOK): shares - 60; purchase price - $6.62; current (final) price - $7.39; percentage change - 12%; profit - $39.2

Micron (MU): shares - 20; purchase price - $19.54; current (final) price - $26.59; percentage change - 36%; profit - $127

ARIAD Pharmaceuticals (ARIA): shares - 58; purchase price - $4.09; current (final) price - $6.94 percentage change - 70%; profit - $151.3

OVERALL PROFIT: $317.15 

To conclude, even though my profit throughout the year was often higher than the final one, considering the situation in Ukraine, which has been negatively affecting the economy and therefore my stocks, my final profit of almost $320 is satisfying.
Furthermore, becoming an invester was indeed very useful to experience. I learned that not only it is important to check your stocks on a regular basis, but it is also necessary to watch news as the world economy may be often affected by some unexpected events.

Updates (March)

To summarize the flow of my stocks during this month, I can openly say that March has been a pretty critical month. All of my stocks rapidly decreased in value, which clearly changed my profit.

This was due to raising conflict in Ukraine, which not only affected lives of Ukrainians, but also had a negative impact on the economy worldwide and the economic growth. Since the conflict with Russians and Ukrainians has started getting more and more serious, any increase in my stocks is not very expected.

Bellow you can find my updated chart: 

NOK: purchase price - $6.62; current price - $7.43; percentage change: - 12.8%

MU: purchase price - $19.54; current price - $22.15; percentage change: - 13.5%

ARIA: purchase price - $4.09; current price - $7.48; percentage change - 82.9%

OVERALL PROFIT: approximately $366

Stocks I Considered, But Did Not Buy

Inrtoduction:

At the beginning of October I was considering, but eventually did not purchase the following stocks: TWTR (Twitter) and OIBR, which stands for Brazil telecommunications. Let's calculate how much money I would have gained/lost if I invested into these companies.

October 2013:

• TWTR = approximately $45
• OIBR = approximately $2.08

Now - March 2014:

• TWTR = $54.59
• OIBR = $1.54

Therefore: 

• TWTR = 21.3%
• OIBR = -25.7% 

Conclusion:

Even though I would have gained some money from Twitter, if I had purchased this stock, I am glad I did not because it's not doing that well, plus its stock value is quite unstable. Furthermore, Brazil Telecommunications are not doing very well either. Hence, I think I made a good decision when I decided not to invest into these two companies.

Updates (February)

February was an interesting month that did not start the way we hoped it would.At the beginning of this month, all my stocks rapidly decreased, which led to a clear loss in my profit. Especially Nokia Cooperation was doing extremely poorly. Their stocks dropped from value of $8.3 to approximately $6.95. Even Micron dropped almost in $3 per one stock, which was a lot. The only company that was keeping my profit "alive" was ARIAD Pharmaceuticals. Despite the fact their ARIAD stocks decreased too, it recovered pretty quickly.

Fortunately, in the middle of February all my stocks started finally recovering. Nokia almost reached its previous highest stock value and Micron even got over boundary of $25, which was indeed very beneficial for me and my profit. Eventually Micron,however, decreased in value of their stock to only $24.00 Luckily enough, ARIAD pharmaceuticals continues its amazing run, which could be shown by it percentage change of 116%.

NOK: purchase price - $6.62; current price - $7.69; profit -$60.7

MU: purchase price - $19.54; current price - $24.19; profit - $86.00

ARIAD: purchase price - $4.09; current price - $8.99; profit - $277.2

OVERALL PROFIT: $423.9

You Can't Eat GDP Growth by Nicholas Norbrook

This article talks about a current financial situation in African countries such as Angola, Cape Town and Ethiopia. According to some research that has been done on Africa over the decades, despite the rapid economic growth, the level of poverty has remained still noticeably high. One of the poorest countries of this continent is Angola where some people unfortunately make less than $1 per day. This clearly shows that even though in 2008 the economic growth was around 20.8%, the majority of Angolans have not been able to benefit from it. It is also important to mention that as African's population increased, so did the costs of transportation, electricity or food. Hence, this could explain and certainly be a cause of a poverty the Africans live in.

Moreover, in several countries such as South Africa, has government adopted a welfare model for transferring money directly to citizens. They have been doing this by giving social grants to people who needed immediate help. According to statistics, number of people who have benefited from these social grants have rapidly increased over the years.There were several steps made that were supposed to help Africa get rid of the property. One of them was the lowering of taxes. However, the results were not successful. It was found that the level of poverty was even higher in countries where people paid lower taxes. Another strategy, which might work is to improve and invest into education that could also prepare Africa for industrialization. To conclude, none of these strategies is a short-term process, and therefore it will require lots of effort and patience to free Africa from poverty.

http://www.theafricareport.com/North-Africa/you-cant-eat-gdp-growth.html

Updates (January)

Nokia (NOK):  was doing pretty good last month. The value of the stocks kept moving in the range from $7.5 to $8.3. It's current value is $7.7, which is not bad since I bought it only for $6.62 (in September) but I hope it will reach $8.00 per share again. The percentage change is 16% and the profit that I got for purchasing Nokia is about $61, which is quite decent. 

Micron (MU):I consider Micron as my second most successful investment. It's recent value was about $23.65. Based on my speculations, I think it could easily hit the value of $24.00 by the end of next month. The percentage change is around 18% and the profit I gained only from this company is $73.

ARIAD Pharmaceuticals (ARIA): I'm glad to say that so far, this has been my most successful purchase. I bought stocks of ARIA right before the Christmas when the value of a share was only about $4.09. After the winter vacation, ARIAD Pharmaceuticals started to rapidly increase in value. Their current value per share is already $7.22, which is a huge difference. The percentage change is approximately 65% and the profit I've gotten only from purchasing this one company is $175. 

To conclude, my overall profit is approximately 280 dollars!

Ariad Pharmaceuticals (January)

After spending some time deciding between two companies, Ariad Pharmaceuticals and Brasil Telecom, I finally made a decision. I had been observing the grow of these two companies as well as reading the latest news about them on regular basis. They were both pretty interesting to look at because of their lower price and potential increase in value. Eventually, I decided to put the rest of my money, which was about $200 into Ariad Pharmaceuticals.

Even though Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. is relatively a small company, it is very well-known for their production of cancer drugs. The value of ARIA stocks started to rapidly decrease at the beginning of October. During the next few months, the price kept being very low. 

I believe that if I buy ARIA now, I will make lots of profit out of in the future since it finally started to rise in value. Plus, as a pharmaceutical company, there is always some progress in production of drugs. Therefore, I assume investing the rest of my money into ARIA will be successful!