In the Beginning...

There were times in my life when I considered getting into the stock market. Fear, inexperience, and a lack of confidence always seemed to persuade me away from it. It took falling in love with a company to get me past those barriers. The company was Google, and it was a long running love affair that continues, though to a diminished extent, to this day. I strongly believe that companies which are valuable to you because of the services they provide will be valuable to others and ultimately make a good investment. No company had every served my needs as well as Google. I was a regular on the Google Labs page and each new product seemed to be better than the next. There was also the nerd-factor helping with the enchantment: My educational background is in Electrical and Computer Engineering and at Google, that meant something.
When Google announced their IPO, I realized that my time had come. I opened up an account with a discount brokerage and had a whopping $800 at my discretion. I came into the game too late to actually get in on the IPO, so instead of the $85 offering price, I bought at the lofty price of $105 per share on the 6th day of trading, August 24, 2004.
As time when on, I started to see that Google, the investment, was as good as Google, the company. By the time I was able to buy more shares, I ended up paying $185 per share. Since then, I've sold some and bought some back, but there was nothing like that early thrill to kick start me into really enjoying the time that I spend looking for the next big one.