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This past week has been pretty tumultuous for the stock market. Unlucky for me, that’s where I have most of my business startup funds invested. I know. I know. I should have taken it out several months ago. I just figured things were heading up again. In any case, I ended up ‘losing’ almost $20,000 of my startup funds over the course of about 10 days. Am I suicidal? Nope. Depressed? Nope…at least not yet. Crazy? For sure.
Why am I not real worried? Because the way the stock market works, you really don’t lose money until you sell. And I’m not going to sell at a loss. Also, even with the huge dropoff, I’m remarkably still up on my intial investment.
So what does this mean for my goal to open a facility in a couple months? Not too much. I still plan on forging ahead. As I said, I should still be ok although things will certainly be tighter (as if they weren’t already!). I’ve done a ton of research on what I need to do and I think my plan is sound. What I’m sure will actually hurt more than any loss of my personal startup funds is the crunch that banks are under now. Because they’re going to be forced to be much tighter with loans, it could affect me should I choose to go the small business loan route. I’d love to get some angel investment or venture capital investment to give me a running start but there’s drawbacks to that as well. I might even look in to crowd sourcing the funding. We’ll see. The good news is that an excellent partnership opportunity may have presented itself. Stay tuned for more details…
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Jimmy Lamour
October 14, 2008
Have you considered investing through other means than the stock market? F.e. precious metals seem to be an interesting options nowadays, specially when their real price is much higher than the official one.
October 14, 2008
Yeah I have but I had most of my money tied up in stocks and because the market dropped so quickly I didn’t get out in time. And it would be a really bad move to sell low (even though I’d still come out ahead of my initial investment). I’m actually going to be putting MORE money in stocks right now since I think there’s some tremendous bargains out there. I’ll also be looking internationally a little.