Home Talk Free Talk 이 정도면 거의 빠찡꼬네요… This topic has [23] replies, 0 voices, and was last updated 3 years ago by 한심. Now Editing “이 정도면 거의 빠찡꼬네요…” Name * Password * Email Topic Title (Maximum Length 80) 아직 다 쓴 것은 아닌데.... 2021년에 항상 돈을 잃던 PBI 주식으로 2만불을 벌고 끝낸 사건을 이렇게 대하 드라마로 만들다니.... 저는 드라마 절대 안보는데, 작가해도 될 것 같음. 가난해 지는 60가지 이유 중, 17번째임. =============================== Chapter 17. Giving up a little too early A miracle happens sometimes. You have to give it enough time, so it can find a way back to you. -Brad Kong I Before starting this chapter, I would like to make sure that I am not writing this to blame a company or someone. I just would like to explain what happened to me and hope you would not make the same mistake. You will see how I made a small fortune eventually out of loss. Also, it would be great if some companies can learn something from this. This is my honest experience as an investor. I do not know why some people do not change or improve their company for years while others change things too much. There is an American technology company called “Pitney Bowes” in Connecticut, USA. It is a publicly traded company and its stock ticker is PBI. This cooperation is known for an online postage machine called “SendPro”. If you sell an item online, you can print out postage with this machine and drop it at the post office. Simply, that machine made my online sales much easier. I had invested a lot of money in the company from 2011 to 2020: Simply, I had owned $65,000 of PBI stocks by 2020. I had bought this company's stocks little by little whenever I had chances for almost nine years. I thought this company had a bright future since online sales helped my retail video game store all the way up until it was closed in 2014. I opened the shop in 2006 and we had made a lot of used items sales on Amazon, eBay and Half.com. Before Pitney Bowes made delivery tracking systems integrated in PayPal and eBay, keeping USPS tracking numbers on paper was an extreme hassle. Before 2009, I had to go to the post office and wait in line whenever I sold an item on eBay. If I chose to use certified mail at the post office, they would give me a tracking number on green receipt paper at that time. After selling 100 items, I didn't even know which tracking number paper is for which item I sold exactly. The biggest problem was fraud buyers. There were fraud buyers online and they lied to eBay or Amazon that they did not receive an item they bought. These online companies ask sellers to provide tracking numbers showing proofs for the item delivery to those customers’ addresses. If sellers cannot find the exact tracking number papers, they will take money out of sellers’ accounts. A lot of amateur sellers stop selling online for this reason almost until 2009. This happened to me a few times as well. I just did not have the luxury not to sell online. I invested so much money in the retail store already and the store did not do very well. Rent was cheap, but it did not bring us enough foot traffic. Well, you get what you paid for, right? Still, I had good feedbacks on eBay and Amazon, so I was able to make more than reasonable sales throughout 8 years: Often online sales were bigger than store sales. But, the problem with fraud buyers still remained. After Pitney Bowes invented the computer delivery tracking system for online sellers, I did not have to worry about those fraud buyer problems any more. Their software lets me print out postage with my computer and printer on eBay and PayPal sites automatically. (These eBay and PayPal are basically the same company since PayPal was spin-off from eBay in 2015.) The tracking number was saved together with an item you sold on eBay. You can easily provide tracking info by clicking a link, so disputes disappear with fraud buyers. Also, good buyers have been able to check delivery status of their items by clicking tracking numbers easily. It is a natural part of online purchase nowadays, but was innovative technology for sellers at that time. In general, inquiry emails about delivery status have decreased dramatically. That was a great advantage since I had to work by myself most of the time. I sold most of my items on Amazon only by 2008. No site had that kind of postage generation and tracking integrated system for small sellers by 2008. So, I used the “Stamps.com” service separately with a $15 a month subscription. (Stamps.com copied Pitney Bowes Technology after all) I did not like Stamps.com since they upgraded software occasionally for any reason and it made my computer freeze unnecessarily. But, the Pitney Bowes system integrated in eBay had been always working smoothly. And, it was free with eBay sales. As online sales literally saved my store, I thought everyone would do online sales someday. “As it saves my life, it can save others’ lives as well!” I thought the company had a strong bright future. I invested originally $100 for this company in 2011. PBI was one of SP500 company stocks until 2014. And, it came with the highest dividend among SP500 companies as well. (I remember it was up to 12% a year at one point.) I probably invested up to $30,000 by 2015. And, I finally ended up having $65,000 of PBI company stocks by 2020. This stock has always come with dividends even now. But, I was at risk of losing $40,000 in 2020 since the company suddenly did not do very well after 2015. It sounds ridiculous, but that was the reason why I ended up having so many PBI stocks even until 2021; I bought so many shares simply because the stock price kept dropping. It is called “averaging down”: You buy more when stocks get cheaper. Your average purchasing price of the stocks gets lower after all. For example, let us say that you bought 100 shares of A company stocks for $500. The average purchasing price of the stock is $5 a share. And, then, let’s suppose the company did not make a lot of profit, so the stock price becomes $3. If you buy 100 more shares, your average purchase price is $4 now: You have 200 shares of A company stocks with $4 average cost a share. Sometimes, people do that when they have faith in the company: They may believe “The stock price will go back to $20 someday. I will make more profit by lowering the average purchase price.” In my case, more likely I did it because I thought I could get out of loss easily by lowering my purchase prices. I knew I would sell it all someday after 5 years of suffering in 2020. The company did just fine until 2014. The stock price was up to $28. I was happy, optimistic and invested about $30,000 by 2015. But, when the stock price dropped to $12 in 2016, all I hoped was getting out of the investment without loss. I was desperate and bought more and more shares whenever the price dropped gradually. It was risky behavior since you can lose everything if a company files a bankruptcy. Some people commit suicide for this reason: They lose all. It is still a huge amount of money to me as I have a portfolio having just little over $600,000 as of 2022. It was even a bigger amount of money at risk at that time since my portfolio was about $420,000 by 2020. A new CEO came in 2012 and the company stock price has been downhill since 2015. The tracking system was invented long before he came to the company. He is still the same CEO in 2022. I personally, do not understand how he has been able to keep the position in the last ten years. I heard that he always gets a 90% approval rate with a vote at the annual stockholder meeting. It is about a $1 billion market capital sized company and hires 10,000 employees. I absolutely have no idea about how politics works in that company. All I know is I had miserable five years since my stocks had dropped crazily after 2015. I checked a lot of information while I had suffered from the loss for five years since 2015. One thing I noticed was the CEO still had gotten paid $10 million salary and benefits every year. I thought it was a lot of wage considering the stock price drop. Probably his salary had been $1 million a year, but the benefit had been huge. He was not the type of a person willing to get paid $1 a year like Steve Jobs or Donald Trump. He will get paid a lot whether the company is suffering or not. I ended up making $20,000 profit only thanks to “Wall Street Bet” from Reddit, but it could have been a big time loss for me that I could never get over for life. While the stock price had been in a downturn in general, it got particularly ridiculous after Covid pandemic hit in 2019. PBI stocks were as low as $1.80 in 2020. I understand it was not completely the PBI’s fault. I know most company stocks crashed in the beginning of 2020. But, the PBI stock price was up to $28 in 2014. As a result, it had been like over 90% gradual drop for 6 years. But, miraculously, I ended up making about $20,000 profit out of those PBI stocks in 2021. I sold them all on 1/26/2021 (Tuesday): It was $13.44 only in two days (1/26/2021 to 1/27/2021). You can check the records. This is surprising since PBI stock has averaged $5 in the last three years from 2019 to 2021: For example, it is $4.84 even today (4/20/2022, Wednesday). “-$40,000 possible loss Vs + $20,000 actual gain” This is a $60,000 difference. I was losing $40,000 out of PBI stocks in 2020, but I ended up making $20,000 profit in 2021. I am glad I did not give up one year early. This happened since I chose a dividend stock to begin with. PBI always has come with about 3% dividends. It was an extremely lucky case, too. When I think about it, everything started with opening the business in 2006. Along with it, I happened to watch news about one old lady in Lake Forest, IL in 2010. Her name was Grace Groner and she left $7 Million when she died in 2010 even though she only bought three shares of Abbott Laboratory stock in 1935. It made me interested in investment in dividend stocks. By the way, Grace had lived until 100, so she fits my topic in Chapter 25. Together with the news and many financial books, my business eventually put me into PBI stock purchase in 2011. Whenever I sold an item on eBay, the shipping postage label from PayPal shows the Pitney Bowes logo. Without eBay sales, I would have not known the name of the company. There could not have been $20,000 capital gain in 2021 or $7,000 dividend income from 10 years’ investment of PBI stocks from 2011 to 2020. I will tell you why buying a stock with a dividend is important later in this chapter. Basically, it is crazy to buy a stock without a dividend when there is one with it. Do not buy a stock as if you gamble. You need some safety net: Dividend income. Please address stocks as saving accounts. That is my advice especially for beginners. First of all, let me get back to 2006 and tell you what happened in detail in chronological order. * * * II As I mentioned in previous chapters, I graduated from college in March, 2006. I was already a power seller on eBay. I got a Bachelor of Science degree in biology. My GPA was only 2.6 out of 4.0, so I decided not to go to graduate school (Pretty much I was not able to). I decided to go to Chicago to start a business instead of New York City since my girlfriend studied in a doctorate program in Champaign, IL. I told you where I met her already in Chapter 12. She eventually gave birth to my daughter later in 2010. Before leaving Buffalo, I sold virtually everything in my apartment via Craigslist.com. It was easy since a lot of new college students were looking for used furniture or TV for the new semester. One Ukrainian girl contacted me and brought some cash with a lot of her friends. One of her friends was a biology instructor at UB. After finding an apartment in Rolling Meadows, IL, I moved everything from Buffalo by car. I thought the apartment was a little too expensive while the size is also bigger than I need ($900 a month in 2006). But, I did not have much choice since I did not know anyone in Chicagoland. It was a cold winter and I had to find some place quickly. I did not rent a U-Haul truck when I moved into that place. The distance is about 500 miles between Buffalo and Chicago. First of all, I was not sure if I could drive a big truck for such a long distance. Secondly, I did not have much extra cash to spend on renting a truck. So, I decided to use my car twice to bring everything to Rolling Meadows from Buffalo. I brought my cat on the second trip. He was very tired in his cage and slept a lot after the 10 hours trip. And, I remember I had back pain for about two weeks because of too much lifting. I remember I bought a huge table from Meijer supermarket and assembled it for my new place. I bought a new mattress and brought it myself by car to save some money on delivery charge, too. I was all by myself and had to do everything on my own. I have been through a lot of difficulties and hardships even though I have wealthy parents. Simply, I cannot write everything here. One day, I saw one Mexican lady moved a broken down car on her own on a busy major road. Her car hardly moved. I cannot imagine what really poor people have to go through. Maybe that motivated me to write this book. The apartment turned out to be pretty looking, but a bad one since they had raised rent every year and had mice. And, the rent did not include any utility at all. It is not that they raise rent because of inflation. They raise it because tenants do not want to move out once they settle. Not only is it bothersome for residents to move out, it costs money, too. Pretty much every landlord is deceptive in that sense. And, this is why you have to buy out a small condo with full cash no matter what instead of going for a bigger house with a mortgage. Unless you have something yours completely, these types of deception will never stop. You will keep leaking money until you get out of rent or mortgage. And, that apartment complex had window stickers for resident cars. It was my fault not to take it seriously and not attach it. Just like in Buffalo, they had plenty of spaces to park, anyway. But, the Redmon towed my car out of the blue one day. It was ridiculous since there were no assigned spots in the complex and plenty of free spaces for everyone. This company “Redmon towing’ is no good and they did it only for money. What they did was not helpful for anyone. When I visited the apartment office in the morning, they had no idea. I spent $100 to pay for a taxi and get my car back: Pointless. I still remember the taxi driver had a very hard time finding the towing company. I felt sorry for him. He was a middle aged man, but definitely a new driver. Navigation was not available to most taxi people in 2007. He said it is OK not to pay, but I paid him since he tried hard. I think it took about two months to find an ideal store location. The web site, “Loopnet.com” was very helpful. I drove around everywhere, but I found it was pointless. An empty retail space is always available somewhere. I did not know which one is good. I read “The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Coffee bar” at that time. It gave me an idea of compatible businesses: “You should open a business close to related businesses. You cannot open it in the middle of nowhere.” I ended up opening a video game store right next to a gaming cafe thanks to this book. I feel sorry for Borders bookstore as I had to return the book after reading since I was broke. I opened my video game shop at a local strip mall in a Chicago suburb in 2006. One lawyer owned a strip mall and the price of the entire plaza was about $5 Million. It was huge, but in a slow location. I did not like him much when I had my business. But, I cannot hate him now since they suggested the lowest rent possible in Chicagoland. Without it, my business could not have run for eight years. I am not sure I will go into more detail, but my rent dropped down to $1,100 a month in 2012 when he bought the J exercise business right next door. The business made incredible noise. Those three lady owners were the most stupid people I have ever seen. They made a lot of noise instead of money. They charged very little money to members, but they never had enough customers. Their situation was like me in Chapter 45: Making only enemies instead of money. Only difference is I was 29 and they were in their 50s. My mother gave me $30,000 initially. She is too generous for stupid two sons. I got two months free rent out of three years of lease contract and spent most of the money to set up the store. I had no idea about wholesalers, but I found one within driving distance. It was a sort of miracle since America does not have that many video game wholesalers to begin with. We saved a lot of money out of delivery charges since we were able to pick up new games on our own. I thought that I would make a lot of money if I could get second hand video games solidly. That way could be a small store. I made way more profit dealing with used games than new ones on eBay already. The size of my store was about 900 square feet and the initial rent was $1,200 a month. I opened it right next to an internet café where a lot of guys gathered to play PC games. Again, it was a good business plan to locate my business right next to a compatible one. The cafe was eventually closed out in 2012 and I suddenly saw a huge decrease in foot traffic. I still feel grateful to Eddie who owned the place. Not only was he a great business man and neighbor, he was a great customer, too. He brought his uncle and nephew to our store and they bought countless video games: Usually Nintendo DS Pokemon series. I visited the Sushi restaurant his parents owned to give them some business. I truly appreciate that we had a profitable 6 years thanks to him. Basically, this is how we made money in our store. We sold a lot of brand new games, accessories and systems. The profit was no more than 15% for brand new items. This is probably the same for all the retail stores. But, more importantly, we accepted used games, accessories and systems as store credits. Customers traded in used stuff they did not need any more and got a discount on new items they planned to buy. After cleaning those used stuff, we sold them for much higher profits than brand new items from wholesalers. We often sold these online. We probably made about $7 to 8 profits whenever we sold a brand new game: We used to get Xbox 360 or PS3 games for $51 from one wholesaler in Elk Grove, Illinois. And, we sold them for $57.95 + tax even though most other places sold those for $59.99+tax: We sold $2.04 cheaper than even Walmart or Target, not to mention GameStop. Some people suggested that it was ridiculous we were selling things even cheaper than corporations. But, I thought that it was fair since we paid less rent and had no advertisement cost. We had customers only by word of mouth. We had coupon magazine advertisements before, but these turned out to be complete waste of money. I hate the Indian Pizza shop owner who suggested that. I do not believe he had any monetary gain out of the suggestion, but it definitely caused loss on us. I had decided to spend those few hundred dollars on discounts instead of advertisements and we did it until our store was closed in 2014. Personally, I just did not feel comfortable to charge $60 full price for games. I knew it was a lot of money to some people. The strip mall had a low income apartment complex on the back. I was nervous that we may lose regulars if we charge in full. Still, we did not see a lot of customers even with $2.04 discounts on new games all the time since the store location was a bit invisible and obsolete. Before moving on, let me explain to you how the store credit system worked in the store. Let us say that there is one game selling at $60. If a customer brought one used game, we could value it for $10 store credit if we could sell it for $15 on eBay. Then, the customer buys the $60 game for $50 because he gave us one used game: It is a $10 discount on a new game since the person traded in a $10 used game. It was just like GameStop. But, there were two differences from these competitors: GameStop, Play and Trade, etc. First of all, we suggested way more credit than those corporations. Second was we did not have a cash option for trade in: “More credit, but no cash” for used game trade in. Simply, customers could not sell games for money while they could use them as store credit only for discounts on new items. That was the best store policy I had ever made since those street craps for digging more cash disappeared a lot. Before that policy in 2007, there had always been arguments about cash amounts. It was pointlessly tiring. Store kept losing a lot of money to give out cash and never made money. After setting up a “store credit only policy”, arguments disappeared and cash drains stopped as well. I noticed that we ended up having more quality gamers for customers, too. I explained about our online sales with Pitney Bowes system in the beginning of the chapter. That was the core part of this investment disaster in 2020. I was on the verge of losing about $40,000 in my portfolio thanks to Pitney Bowes stocks in 2020. I had four painful years from 2016 to 2020. This could have been my first major loss if one miracle did not happen in 2021. I have lost money before, but none of it has been a huge amount. Currently, I have 128 company stocks and 42 company bonds in my portfolio in 2022. I think about 10 companies filed bankruptcy and the total loss had been less than $10,000 in the last ten years. I am getting about $20,000 dividends and interests every year, so that loss is not really significant. But, a $40,000 loss solely on one company could be really big. For your information, I have bought most company stocks for 100 shares per company except PBI. Now I buy more than that, but it has been like this for quite a while, especially before 2015, so the loss has not been that big. In 2020, my situation was like I would be more than happier if I could get my $65,000 back without loss. Instead, I got $85,000 back on January 26th in 2021. Do you know what happened on that exact day? There is a community website called Reddit and it has a subgroup called “Wall Street Bet”. Three million members were there in 2021 even though I heard more than 11 million members are there now. These investors had united all together and focused on buying certain stocks for reasons I do not understand. Sometimes, they call it “pumping” or “short squeezing”. One day, these three million people decided to focus on buying Pitney Bowes stock out of the blue. I am not sure why they decided that. $5 stock suddenly became $13 only for two days starting on 1/26/2021. This was like a miracle. I could not believe my eyes when I checked the graphs on screen. “What is going on?” I was relieved for that moment, but I had to make a quick decision. “Do I have to sell this now? Or wait longer?” I decided to sell as soon as I saw the profit hit about $20,000. It was 2:30 PM in Central time, which was 30 minutes before the stock market closed. I would not have done that unless PBI stock had been a headache over five years. And, I am glad I was not very greedy, either. I realized that my decision was correct two days later. Suddenly PBI stocks went back down to $5 to 6 ranges and it has been like this in the last two years now. I am glad I did not give up on PBI stock too early when all my friends recommended selling them. They said there is no hope for the company and I may get $0, which means $65,000 loss. I am glad I stuck to my idea. Also, I am glad I did not hold on to the stocks too long to get more profit. $20,000 profit was plenty, especially for a five years old headache. I knew this was “enough”. I sold all out when I had a chance on that day in January, 2021. I am not writing this to blame the company or the CEO. It is over and I do not think I will buy the stock ever again unless something happens like the CEO retirement. Maybe the company can learn something from my story to improve the situation. * * * III Here is one question: Did I really make money because I was patient? That answer is “No”. Absolutely not. The secret was “dividend” stocks. Dividend to stock is like interest to the bank. If you have some money in a bank, the bank will give you interest every month. Interest and dividend are the same things. Only the names are different. When stocks give out interest like a savings account in a bank, it is called dividend stock. Only difference is banks give out interest every month, but stocks give out dividends usually every quarter. Quarter means every three month. So, you get dividends every three months. Not every stock is a dividend stock. According to my experience, usually about half of stocks in the entire market are dividend stocks. The rate changes all the time as new companies come or old companies go away. Here are some examples of dividend stocks: Apple, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, Intel, AT&T, Target, Microsoft, etc as of 2022. Here are some examples of non-dividend stocks: Tesla, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc as of 2022. I always buy dividend stocks only. If a company I am interested in does not have a dividend, I buy bonds of the company instead: For example, Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Apple etc. Their stocks do not have a dividend, but their bonds have interests. Bonds give out interest, which is the same as a dividend. As I said, only the names are different. If a company does not have a dividend or bond giving out interest, I just do not buy. For example, Facebook stock does not have a dividend nor the company has a bond. I never buy the company. FB stock price dropped crazily anyway. I could not have endured five years of depression with PBI stock price without getting dividends (3-6% every year). It is the right approach to stocks as bank accounts. 이 부분을 더 써야 함. * * * IV Originally, I did not start writing a book because of money. One day, an idea hit me: “What would happen to me in 100 years? People will not even know I existed.” I did not want to be oblivious completely. I thought I could write about my own stories at least. My desire to get out of the hellish ********** in the nursing home got particularly stronger in 2021. I had problems with my job at a nursing home for a couple of years from 2020. There was one short and ugly manager giving a hard time to everyone. He is just a poor worker after all, so I will ask him to bring my ****** if I have a chance to see him later. Another problem was management interrupted me moving forward to a better job. I had the medical coder license, but they did not have an opening for that job. I had the pharmacy technician license as well, but the small pharmacy store in that nursing home belonged to a different company called “Symbria” and they did not have an opening, either. The dining service I worked at kept preventing me from transferring to the ******* staff department. They tried to use me as a ******** only. I felt like I was trapped in a swamp. The ********** job was way harder than the ********* even though they get paid exactly the same. I thought this was ridiculous. Luckily, I have been in a situation to get enough dividend and interest from my portfolio every month in 2022: Enough for living. My wife is working and I have only one child. I thought I could try to be a writer since it gives me more meaning. People can find my book at the library 100 years later and recognize I had lived on earth once. I thought it is better for me to start a little early before turning 50. I still have 51 years left if I live until 100. Who knows I can make more money with writing, anyway? Maybe some people wonder why I write a thick book. This book is obviously thicker than others. When I checked Amazon's top seller list, I noticed that a lot of them are thick books. “It” written by Steven King was 1,150 pages. I am not a famous guy. I don’t think I can write way better than others. But, I thought I can write more than others at least. In a sense, this happened to me throughout my life. I had never shown much talent in any field or achieved a superior goal. But, I think I have tried harder than others at least. If this book is successful, one of the reasons would be simply that I write more than others. I am good at doing the same thing persistently for a long period of time. Talent may be important. But, I believe luck may come to a person trying harder than others. I am not famous, so I have to write more at least. Also having a bit of a long term plan and not giving up easily is important. Maybe that is why I was able to avoid big stock losses, have enough savings to support my family without working and basically retire at a relatively young age. 이 부분은 말이 되게 좀 고칠것. I agree to the terms of service Update List
