ENTREPRENEUR

This is a re-posting of an article from Intigril, my site on investing, trading, and personal finance. To view the original article on Intigril, click here.

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History

Image from Wikipedia

The date – May 17, 1792.  The place – New York City, 68 Wall Street, outside under a buttonwood tree.  The event – 24 stock brokers have just signed an agreement to create the ancestor of what is today’s largest stock exchange by total company value.

That’s right, you guessed it, it’s the birth of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and if you’re curious as to what it actually means to buy and sell stocks, how they’re sold, and who’s selling them, you’re in the right place.  In the last article, I showed you what a stock actually is – a share of ownership in a company.  It’s important to keep in mind that, officially, each share of stock is represented by an actual piece of paper that outlines the details (company name, proof of ownership, etc) of the stock that you own.  These days, these records may be held electronically, but back in the ol’ days, they were actual products that were bought and sold for money.

Anyone that wanted to buy or sell stock would instruct their broker to go down to the physical location of the stock exchange and come up with a favorable deal.  These brokers would then exchange stock certificates for cash and either provide them to their clients or hold them until their clients needed them.

Trading today

Today, things are a bit different.  The NYSE has expanded, and though there’s still some human interaction left in the trading process, most deals are done electronically on a vast computer system.  In addition, the NYSE isn’t the only player in town anymore.  The NASDAQ is a fully electronic exchange that matches buyers and sellers and provides a centralized location for trading stocks (not to mention other financial products).  It’s the second largest exchange in the US, and it’s known for housing mostly tech stocks.  These are the two big exchanges that you should know about, though it may also help to keep in mind the American Stock Exchange, which is the third largest exchange, though these days it doesn’t focus too much on stocks.

There are a lot more brokers now, too.  And you’ll probably never see a stock certificate in your life, but the basic idea is the same.  Exchanges provide a way for buyers and sellers to trade stocks quickly and easily.

So who’s doing all the trading?

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The total market value of all of the companies in the NYSE alone is around $18 trillion (after they merged with the electronic exchange Euronext).  On top of that, there are around 2 billion shares traded every day, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars of transactions.

Who’s doing all this trading?

Well, obviously there are a lot of individual traders, but the majority of trading is done by banks and institutional investors – or the big companies that are hired to manage your pension funds, 401(k)s, the endowment funds of big schools like Harvard and Yale, sovereign wealth funds that manage the money of entire countries, hedge funds, mutual funds, and any other large organizations that are entrusted with the savings of millions of working professionals for safekeeping.

These companies are all employing their own investment strategies, analyses, calculations, opinions, and most importantly, emotions, to try to find stocks that will help them grow their capital.  If any single of of them puts in a large order to buy or sell stock, it will flood the market and can significantly move prices up or down.  In the next post, I’ll talk about what makes up the price of a stock, but for now, it’s enough to know that these guys play a big roll in the whole process of supply and demand.

Market making

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There’s one last thing you should know about stock trading, at least for now.  When most individuals place an order to buy or sell a stock, they’re actually going through an intermediary – or a market maker.  These are people (or companies) that are required to “provide a market” for stocks buy buying and selling at the prices that they quote the public.  In exchange, they get preferential treatment in the markets whenever they place their own orders.

Market makers will always sell stock at a slightly higher price than they buy it, which brings them a small profit on every transaction they do.  Good traders or computer programs that do this thousands, or millions, of times a day can generate huge amounts of money, so market making is a pretty lucrative business.

When you put in an order to buy or sell a stock, chances are it’s going from you to your broker to a market maker who may or may not match you up with another buyer or seller in the market.  If there’s no match, the market maker will just take your order and wait until later in the day when he can offset his new position, and in a market that’s trading billions of shares a day, that’s usually not too hard to do.

What’s next?

At this point, you know what stocks are, why companies sell them, why people trade them, and how they’re bought and sold.  But the most important part is yet to come.  In the next article, we’ll tell you what stock prices mean and why they can move so far up and down in such short timespans.  Read on!

This is a re-posting of an article from Intigril, my site on investing, trading, and personal finance. To view the original article on Intigril, click here.

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What the heck is a share of stock?

Want to know what stock is?  Simple – it’s a share of ownership in a company.  When you buy a stock, you’re buying a very, very, very small piece of ownership in a company that has decided to sell itself, in part of in whole, to the general public.  That’s it.  Seriously.  If a company has sold one billion shares to the public, and you own 1 share of stock in that company, then you own a billionth of that company.

Cool, I’m an owner!  What do I get?

Just because you own a few shares of Coke, it doesn’t mean you can just waltz into a grocery store and grab some soda.  But don’t fret.  As a stock owner, you’re entitled to something much more important – a claim to some of Coke’s profits.  But again, there’s a problem.  You can’t just call up the manager of Coke’s bank account and demand a wire transfer tomorrow.  Only Coke’s board members can authorize a payment to the company’s shareholders, you.

As a shareholder, you get to vote on who gets on Coke’s board of directors, but let’s be honest, as an individual investor, you don’t care about who’s on Coke’s board.  The only thing you’re looking for is your share of Coke’s earnings (paid out as a dividend) and a higher stock price so you can sell your stock at a profit.

As an owner of the company, though, there’s one thing to keep in mind.  If the company goes bankrupt, chances are, you won’t actually get any money that the company has.  By law, the company first has to repay any debts that it owes.  After it does that, then you can get paid, but if the company went bankrupt, what’s the likelihood that it will have anything left over for you?

Why do companies sell stock?

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Imagine you had started a great company producing flying alarm clocks (let’s just go with it).  You’ve been able to set up a factory to produce and sell thousands of alarm clocks in California, but now you’re getting orders in from the rest of the country and you can’t keep up with them.  You need to open more factories, you need to pay more workers, you need to set up supply chains and coordinate with distribution centers.  What do you do?

You could take out a loan from the bank, or, you could sell some (or all) of your ownership in the company to raise money for growth and expansion.  If you decide to go that route, you’ll generally contact one of the big Wall Street banks to take care of the dirty work for you – figuring out how many shares to sell and at what price, finding buyers for your stock, complying with SEC guidelines for reporting, etc.  Of course, the big Wall Street bank will charge you a fee for all of their work.

The bank will then buy all of the shares that you’ve decided to offer themselves.  Then, at some point in the future, they’ll resell those shares to the general public in an initial public offering, or IPO.  Once they’re out in the public, your company is no longer involved in the process.  Now, your job is to keep growing the company so that its new owners make a nice, hefty profit.  If you do a good job, more people will want to buy shares in your company, driving up the stock price, and keeping your shareholders happy.  If you don’t, more people will sell your stock, causing your stock price to tank, which may eventually lead to your new bosses outing you and in favor of finding a new CEO.

But ultimately, this IPO will be a pretty good deal for you, too.  As the founder of this hugely successful flying alarm clock company, you’ve probably kept a large chunk of shares for yourself.  Now that these shares are trading freely on the market, you’ll be able to sell them for a pretty penny and cash out, if you want.  Just keep in mind that as part of the IPO, you’ll be prevented from selling your shares for a specific period of time – usually six months.

Back to reality

Hopefully, you now have a better idea of what all the fuss is about.  Stocks and the stock market are a major part of everyone’s daily lives, at least in some small way.  Now that you know a bit more about what a stock is, you’re ready to get into the details.  In the next post, we’ll talk about how stocks are traded and who’s buying and selling them.  Read on!

This is a re-posting of an article from Intigril, my site on investing, trading, and personal finance. To view the original article on Intigril, click here.

Invest in the market.

Traditionally, one of the best ways to build long-term wealth has been by steadily contributing money to a portfolio of diversified stocks over the course of many years.  And you know what?  If you haven’t already started, now’s the time.

The earlier you start with investing, the more the power of compounding can help you.  Yes, the market can drop dramatically, yes, the past decade has seen two huge recessions, yes, things look bleak.  Guess what?  It’s still the perfect time.  The more time you give yourself to grow your money, the richer you’ll be.  If you can stay disciplined and follow an intelligent plan.

Stocks are a great way to invest.  So are mutual funds.  In fact, if you’re interested in long-term investing, mutual funds may even be the safer way to go, and we’ll soon have a guide to getting started with mutual funds.  But if you’ve got the time and the will to do a little work, you can take control of your own investments and build your own personal mutual fund.  The best part?  You won’t have to pay a “professional manager” on Wall Street to make the same trades that you can make yourself.

Are you ready to get started?

Good.  Let’s roll.

My guide to stocks

1. The beginner’s introduction to stocks
2. How does stock trading actually work?
3. What goes into a stock’s price?
4. Investing in stocks for the long run

This is a re-posting of an article from Intigril, my site on investing, trading, and personal finance. To view the original article on Intigril, click here.

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Your plan

Over the past 7 articles, we’ve given you a lot of information on how to manage your finances. If it all seemed a bit overwhelming, this article should help clear things up. Below, we’ll provide you with a summary plan that should help you make sense of it all.  If you take care of the items below, you’ll be on solid financial ground and you’ll be able to start generating even more money right away.

1. Get your insurance needs out of the way

   If you’re working for a company, you probably have the option to sign up with its insurance providers to handle almost all of your insurance needs (medical, dental, vision, life, disability, etc). Hopefully, you got everything squared away when you were first hired, but if you didn’t have that chance, contact your HR representative and see what you can take care of now. Go out and buy home owner’s or renter’s insurance if you don’t already have it.

   If you’re not working for a company, there are a variety of providers that will sell you independent insurance coverage, you may have to pay more than if you were getting it through a group plan, so shop around and find the plans that best suit your needs.

2. Figure out your expenses

   Calculate what you’re going to need to survive each month. Add to that any monthly debt you need to pay off. This is the minimum amount that you should be depositing into your checking account each month. Ideally, you’ll have quite a bit more than this coming in, but try to shoot for at least 2-3 times your monthly expenses.  If you’re having problems scrounging up enough to meet that amount, it’s time to make some changes.

3. Deal with your debt and your tax-free retirement accounts

   In step 2, you calculated the amount that you’ll need to cover your debts. Pay those off on time every month. With any money that’s left over, figure out how much of it you’d be willing to give up each month and then have it automatically withdrawn from your paycheck and deposited into a tax-free retirement account (401K, Roth 401K, 403B, etc).

4. Build up your emergency fund while keeping your checking account healthy

   Whatever you have left should go towards building up your emergency fund. It may take you several months to a year of saving before you’re able to build up your account all the way, but stick with it until it’s done.  You’ll sleep easier, and that has to be worth it.

5. Plan for the future

   At this point, you’ll have be on a solid financial foundation. Your next step is to look at what you’re going to need for the future. If you expect to buy a new car, put a down payment on a house, or make another large purchase, you should set up a separate savings account that you’ll contribute to every month as you save up specifically for that purchase. If you don’t see any big expenses coming up, you should start trading or investing. The guides on this site will help you get started with growing your money.

After a year or two of going through this plan, you should be able to reduce your debts, maintain a solid emergency fund, have enough in your checking account to take care of expenses, and be on track for an early retirement.  On top of these basics, if you can cover all of your expenses with a good credit card that provides cash back or other rewards while managing to pay off your full balance every month, you’ll be all set.

More resources

• If you want some more help when it comes to money, we’d recommend buying The Wealthy Barber. This is one of the best books on personal finance, and it’s actually a pretty good read (unlike most other financial books). If you’re serious about getting your finances in order, reading this book is mandatory. It’s the best $10 you’ll spend.
• You should also check out Ramit Sethi’s blog, I Will Teach You To Be Rich.  It has a whole slew of great articles on personal finance, and if you like a snarky comment here and there, you’ll enjoy his writing style too.
• Passive Panda is also a nice, new(ish) resource that can help you improve your financial situation by providing you with new ideas to generate income and make money.
• Get Rich Slowly is another good resource for personal finance articles.

And finally, if you’re ready to start making extra money every week by trading options, there are a ton of articles on Intigril just waiting for you to read them, learn, trade, and be free.  Good luck with your personal finance goals, and we hope to see you trading soon!

This is a re-posting of an article from Intigril, my site on investing, trading, and personal finance. To view the original article on Intigril, click here.

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Growing your money

Image from sheelamohan

By this point, you’re familiar with all of the boring parts of personal finance. Unfortunately, you need to have all of that boring stuff taken care of before you can get to the really exciting parts – how to use the money you have to make more of it, or how to “make your money work for you.”

Believe it or not, one of the worst things you can do is to let all of your money sit in a savings or checking account. That’s why in Part 2 of this series, I told you to only keep as much as you needed for your average expenses (plus a buffer) in your checking account. At first glance, this may not make sense. Why shouldn’t you keep all of your money safe and sound in bank deposits?

Well, the main reason is, that money could be making you even more money if you used it the right way. If you leave it in a savings or checking account, it won’t be doing that for you.

How does it work?

If this is a new concept for you, don’t worry, we’ll go through how this works, and we’ll even give you a few resources to help get you started.

You’ve probably heard the expression “it takes money to make money.” Well, it’s true. Companies have to pay their employees so they can provide a product or service that their customers will buy. Banks take the money you deposit with them and use it to provide loans. And everyday workers use their hard-earned salaries to invest or trade. That last point is what we’ll focus on in this article.

As an individual investor or trader, your best bet at getting rich is to slowly and steadily grow your money through the power of compounding. Sound scary? It’s not (and as an up-and-coming trader, you’re going to learn to love it). All it means is that over time, you can use the money you’ve made to make even more money. Essentially, compounding is a wonderful thing that helps you grow your money faster and faster and faster. All you have to do is help get the process started, and stay consistent.

Risk

Image from ddpavumba / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Before you can get started, though, you have to know about risk. Why risk? Well, it’s the most important consideration in growing your money – the more “risk” you take, the more money you can earn or lose. If you put your money in no-risk investments, you won’t lose it, but you also won’t make a lot. If you put your money in higher risk investments or trades, you stand to make a lot more, but you could also lose a lot more too, so part of learning how to grow your money is figuring out what you’re comfortable risking.

With that said, it’s very important to not put any money in risky trades or investments if you can’t afford to lose it. This article is for people that have taken care of their basic expenses, have saved for emergencies, and are have a solid payment plan in place for their debt.

The choices at your disposal

Now lets go over some of the different choices you have, how risky they are, and how much money you can expect to make from them.

Bonds (fixed income)

Bonds are essentially loans from you to someone or something else. When you buy a bond, you’re loaning money to a company, town, city, state, or country in exchange for the promise that you’ll get paid back more than you lent out. You can buy a bond that will pay you back in as little as a few days, or as long as a few decades. The amount you get back depends on a few things – the interest rate in the economy, the chance that whoever you lent the bond to goes bankrupt, and when your bond is set to repay you.

more…

Stocks

Everyone has heard about stocks. Even if you have no idea what they are, you’ve seen plenty of stories about the “markets” rising and falling, new companies going public, and stock shares. Stocks (and funds, which you’ll read about next) are some of the most popular financial instruments for everyday people to grow their money.

more…

Mutual funds

One of the problems with owning individual stocks is that it’s too easy to lose money. One bad headline in a company that you own and the stock could go down 30%, wiping out your capital along the way. That’s where mutual funds, or plain old “funds”, come in. Funds are groupings of stocks that are combined together to form a single investment. When you buy into a mutual fund, you’re actually buying into many different stocks at once. The idea is that a combination of many different stocks can help to offset losses in any one, particular stock.

more…

401(k)s

If you work for a company, chances are you have access to a 401(k), which is essentially just a retirement account that invests in mutual funds. The company that administers the 401(k) will give you a choice of a few funds, and you can control how much of your money goes into which funds.

more…

Options

Options are our favorite financial instrument, and they’re what I specialize in. Options are an incredibly flexible class of securities that are known as “derivatives.” What this means is that they’re only valuable because they tie back to a security that actually has real value (like a stock). Said differently, their value is derived from the value of something else. You can have options on all sorts of different underlying securities, but on this site, when I talk about options, I mean stock or stock index options.

more…

Other advanced financial instruments

Options aren’t the only derivatives out there that you can trade. There are also futures, swaps, CDOs, and a variety of other exotic instruments that big banks create. In addition to derivatives, you can also trade commodities (things like corn, soybeans, or coffee), as well as precious metals (like gold and silver). Learning how to trade each of these is similar to trading options – if you do decide to get into them, learn how the markets work, understand the little quirks that go along with each instrument, and practice, practice, practice.

Real estate

Real estate is a tougher investment to do properly. Many people used to think that the price of a house could never go down, so as long as you continued to borrow money from the bank to buy and sell houses, you could make money forever.

more…

Getting started

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Now that you know what’s available to you, how do you get started? First off, you’ll need a broker – someone that can execute your trades and take care of the logistics. They’ll charge you, so make sure to find the cheapest broker that you can find that still provides you with the level of service you’re looking for.

You should also start familiarizing yourself with whatever it is you want to invest in. Interested in bonds? Read up about their peculiarities. Interested in options? Figure out how puts and calls work. Want to build up long-term wealth with minimal effort? Find out which mutual funds are the best fit for you.

Once you’ve learned what you need to get started, go slowly. If you’re investing in stocks or bonds, figure out the right asset allocation and don’t go beyond that. If you’re trading options, figure out a strategy that works for your trading style and try some virtual trading before putting real money in. In any case, be consistent, and don’t get discouraged from a few losses. It’s all part of the process of growing your money.

That’s it for the personal finance series. In the next, and final post, we’ll wrap it all up, give you some good resources to learn more, and get you on your way to achieving financial stability so that you can then go on to be a trader and achieve financial independence. Read on!

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Where my interest comes from

You wanna know how geeky I truly am?  Forget the fact that I’m a computer programmer, or that I taught myself finance, or that I’m a gangly South Asian dude.

No no, those things don’t come close to the pinacle of my nerdom.

In high school, I was a hardcore Model UNer.  I was in the club for three years.  At one point, I was even on the executive board, I – the “Undersecretary General,” I believe.  And on top of all that, up until this coming January, I’ll have gone back to every MUN conference that my high school has hosted and have been a conference chair.  Last year I even chaired the Security Council.

Why is this relevant… to anything?

Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time over the past year reading and learning about the various institutions of the world – the UN (of course), NATO, the EU, the Fed, China, the African Union, even transnational corporations.  They captivate my interest.

This is strange, considering I’m such a proponent of individuality.  I don’t ascribe to the traditional ways of identifying with monolithic, geographical, racial, or ethnic groups.  Up until recently, I believed that people should primarily define themselves by who they are, what they’re passionate about, and where they focus their efforts.

So why is it that these huge, worldly organizations intrigue me?

I suppose it’s because I also like to consider myself a student of humanity.  I’m fascinated by the way the world has evolved, by the reasonings behind why people behave they do, behind how nations and peoples have to come to be where they are today.  Nothing embodies the progression of people better than the rise and prosperity of these organizations.

The human condition today

Not surprisingly, I’m most interested in the UN.  I’m of the belief that one day, probably hundreds of years into the future, all of the world’s cultures will have integrated themselves well enough to be able to come together under a single, unified, global governing body.  The UN is nothing more than an infant, when it comes to imagining what this global body will look like, but it is a start.

Consider this: despite all of the wars, uprisings, famines, and other horrors we see around us, we’re probably living in the most peaceful time in civilized human history^{[1],[2],[3],[4]}.  These days, the focus is more on economic prosperity rather than world domination.  As we’ve become better at not killing ourselves due to different beliefs and skin colors, we’ve developed more and more institutions to ensure prosperity.  And the history and nature of these institutions represent true insight into human behavior.

Let’s take, for example, NATO.  For those of you that are unfamiliar with this organization, it’s basically a giant defensive force against Russia.  OK, that may be simplifying it a bit, but I wanted to get your attention.  After World War II, the US and a bunch of countries in Europe signed mutual defense pacts – if one country was attacked, all of the other countries in the pact would ally themselves against the attacker.  Over time, that agreement expanded, and now there are 28 countries allied together, and is now the world’s largest military alliance.  NATO has its own hierarchical structure, governing council, and organization leaders.

Similarly, but on a much bigger scale, the UN represents an organization where almost all of the world’s nations can come together to come up with solutions to global differences.  The UN is composed of a large number of departments, sub-departments, committees, even humanitarian organizations.  In theory, it’s an organization that’s supposed to prevent the outbreak of a massive, global conflict.  In practice, it’s not as effective as it could be, given that sovereignty is closely guarded by each of its member states.  But, in any case, it represents a humanistic effort to bring the world closer together.

Even the European Union, which is a highly dense, geographically specific (yet highly influential), concentrated area of the world, is a successful organization that strives to integrate people from a variety of different cultures, many of whom have historically killed each other without mercy.  The fact that such an organization exists, and that its organizational structures are so similar to that of the other major world organizations, is a tribute to the human condition.

Where it’s all going

It’s my belief that increased literacy, education, and prosperity slowly lead to an improvement in the human condition.  Hell, I don’t just believe it, I know it, I’m living proof of it.  As time continues, it’s inevitable that humans as a whole will become increasingly educated and increasingly intelligent (and, as each generation is born and continues to grow, humans as a race do get measurably smarter^[5]).  As this happens, we’ll see more and more cooperation, integration, and co-dependence (said to connotate a positive effect, for all you psych majors).  This will lead to the rise of more and more supranational, global organizations dedicated to the growth of the human race.

One day, the NATO of the West will merge with the NATO of the east (Shanghai Cooperation Organization, at least as some claim…) to form a worldwide defense force.  And one day, likely much farther into the future than that, that force may even dissipate due to its own obsolescence.  One day, a long-removed descendant of the United Nations will (effectively) oversee all of the nations on Earth.  One day, we’ll all be so interdependent, economically, informationally,  militarily, socially, that it would be unthinkable for even a minor-scale global conflict to erupt.  One day.

Until then, I’m finding it extremely interesting to watch our slothful, plodding progression towards that day through the emergence of supranational organizations, and the more I think about it, the more I start to believe that, if I had to work for someone or something else, I would love that “something else” to be the UN.

Or maybe NATO.  After all, we’re not perfectly safe, just yet.

Just a quick update here, since there’s not much to say.  I got back to DC on Sunday and have pretty much been chilling at home the whole time (by choice).  That’s not to say that I’ve been slacking and doing nothing, though (those of you that know me know that I get too antsy to keep that up for long).

In the past week I

• Did some more work for Intigril (wrote some articles, did some quantitative research, collaborated with my good friend, Alain, on trading strategies, and, of course, traded)
• Filled out my visa application for Pakistan and India
• Planned out part of my trip to Australia
• Started P90X (toughest workout program I’ve ever done)
• Bought the right food for P90X and started eating right (V8 juice + raw egg whites is so unbelievably gross, unfortunately it’s also super healthy)
• And started reading a lot of business building articles that my good friend Selena introduced to me

I like having down time, but not seeing anyone for the past week has been getting to me.  This week I’m hoping to go out a bit more. In any case, I’ve been concentrating a lot more on setting myself up for life after graduation.  Without a salary, I’m going to have to continue to support myself by trading.  So far, so good, but it’s one of those things that can turn against you at any point, so you have to be ever vigilant.

That’s pretty much all for now.

Ciao

This is a short preview of an article on Intigril, my site on investing, trading, and personal finance. To view the original article on Intigril, click here.

Can you predict the market?

Have you ever wondered whether you can predict where the market is going to close based on what it has done in the past? Perhaps you want to know where the Dow will close after a week of big moves up, or maybe you want to know where your favorite stock will go after a disappointing earnings release.

I was curious about the same thing. We all know that the efficient market theory tells us that you can’t predict future returns based on previous moves, but I was curious to see if there were any exceptions.

Image from jannoon028

My current favorite strategy is to trade credit spreads on the weekly S&P 500 (SPX) options. By selling credit spreads based on the highs, lows, trends, and momentum on any given Friday (and only on Fridays), I can take put myself in the position of taking advantage of short time exposure and the quick evaporation of any time value left in those options. This strategy works well, but I wanted to see if I could predict where the market will close based on moves during the week.

To see if there was any relationship between where the market closes on Fridays and what it does over the course of the week, I gathered the open and close prices for the S&P 500 for every trading day since July 2003 and started crunching numbers. Using market returns in a given time period, and returns on their respective Fridays, I calculated correlations and relationships for five key relationships:

1. The relationship between Friday’s performance (Thursday’s close to Friday’s close) and the performance from Wednesday’s close to Thursday’s close
2. The relationship between Friday’s performance (Thursday’s close to Friday’s close) and the performance from Thursday’s open to Thursday’s close
3. The relationship between Friday’s performance (Thursday’s close to Friday’s close) and the performance of the previous week (Monday’s open to Thursday’s close)
4. The relationship between Friday’s performance (open to close) and Friday’s open
5. The relationship between Friday’s performance (Thursday’s close to Friday’s close) and Friday’s open

Read the rest of the article, including the results, on Intigril…

This was a video I took a couple of years ago in Barcelona. I thought it was pretty cool at the time, but nobody ever saw it on YouTube so I’m giving my friends a chance to check it out here. Let me know what you think:

I’m addicted.

Big parties.  Small groups.  Dinners.  Card games.  Video games.  Sports.  It doesn’t matter what the variation is.

But last night, I realized that I get a high off being around people.

Did you know that a simple activity like shopping can produce a similar reaction in your brain to that of getting high off a drug?  In fact, activities that are completely unrelated to drugs – shopping, learning, meditating, dancing, and exercising, have been shown to provide the same neural reactions in the brain as drugs do, so it’s entirely possible that you can be high on life.

Yesterday I went out with a bunch of friends from Stern for the first time in months.  As I was talking with old friends, meeting new people, and generally just enjoying the social scene, I realized I was incredibly happy.  Blissful.

This was the same feeling I experienced hanging out with the exchange crew in Milan.  Elation.

I realized that, even though I value relationships with specific people, I love being around others, in general.  It’s a great feeling.  Perhaps one of the reasons I love the city so much?