Actually, if you can do this for your kids or relatives kids I advise it.
One of the coolest presents I ever got was from my grandfather (a self-made,
self-taught businessman): he bought me a small block of shares of Coca-cola
Canada, when the stock was created for the first time for the Canadian stock
market. He thought it was a good buy, but mostly he wanted me to have a big
incentive to learn about stocks and the things you can do with them.
I did in fact start learning about stocks. I watched the price carefully
which meant that for the first time I was opening the business section of
the Globe and Mail or the Waterloo Record. I weathered a few ups and downs.
When I finally sold the stock it was up 2/3 from when I'd received it, and
as I recall the sale helped finance something pretty important to me near
the end of university (but I can't remember if it was my car or my trip to
europe).
lisa
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gregory Alan Bolcer [mailto:gbolcer@endeavors.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 4:34 PM
> To: IddFam@cs.com
> Cc: FoRK
> Subject: Re: Sony Stock
>
>
> Hi Connie,
> I remember you sent along something earlier that I don't
> remember if I ever responded to or not. The best site
> to track stocks is using http://stocks.wired.com/ Sony's
> symbol is SNE and trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
>
> The best possible way to teach your son about stocks is to have
> him follow the stock by hand. Buy him 11"x17" chart paper and
> pencils. Show him how to label the vertical axis using a
> predicted price range and show him how to label the horizontal
> access to represent every trading day. Every day in the morning
> or evening, use the day's newspaper (not online) to record the
> open, high, low, and
> close of the stock in addition to the volume. On the graph paper,
> draw a line between the high and low with an intersecting bar
> to the left of it for the open price and a intersectin bar to the
> right for the closing price. There are plenty of online
> sites that will do the graphing for you, but this will not
> teach your son trading discipline, won't encourage familiarity
> with the complexity of the patterns, and won't teach him about
> the fundamentals of stock movements.
>
> In addition, Sony has at regular intervals Annual General
> Meetings of shareholders (AGMs) and Extraordinary General
> Meetings of shareholders (EGMs). As a Sony shareholder, you will
> be asked to participate in votes for particular issues that require
> stockholder approval. They are an extraordinary source of information
> for what is happening inside of a company.
>
> Believe it or not, my first introduction to the market was with
> a game called "Wall Street" that ran on my 1981 IBS 8086 machine.
> It generated random market conditions and allows the player (me) to
> allocate different levels of funds into oil & gas, currency, precious
> metals, small cap, med cap, high tech, and several other areas. Extremely
> interesting game. A local company out here in Orange County called
> Interplay makes a Wall Street Trader 2000 game that I think is related.
> This is about as close as you can get to understanding how real
> world markets work. I'd recommend setting him up with a copy as
> the "game" part makes it more appealing to a 10 year old.
>
> As to Sony competitors, they are such a large corporation that
> you would need to split up into particular markets when identifying
> competitors. At some levels Sony competes with Microsoft, at others
> they compete with Intel, and even still others they compete with Dell,
> Compaq, and others. All this just in the computing & software space.
> When you start adding in game machines, consumer electronics, handhelds,
> movie, media, music, and entertainment, there's a whole lot of competition
> out there.
>
> Anywyas, good luck.
>
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> IddFam@cs.com wrote:
> >
> > Greetings:
> > I am trying to gather information on Sony stock for my son
> Seth. He is 10
> > yrs. old and wants to invest some of his money into Sony stock. I also
> > wondered if you knew of any age appropriate materials that I
> could use to
> > explain about investing to my son.
> > Thanks,
> > Connie Iddings
>
> > Greetings:
> > My son who is 10 years-old won a hundred dollar savings
> bond when he was
> > five. He now wants to cash it in. I figured he would want to buy some
> > computer or Playstation games. I was therefore surprised when
> he said he
> > wanted to buy Playstation stock. I took this as a great
> learning opportunity.
> > Can you send us any information on Sony's recent stock
> performance and maybe
> > even some of their major competitors performance records? Also
> do you know of
> > any other sources that I can go to, to get information about
> stocks and the
> > market that might be closer to his grade-level and easier to
> understand? Any
> > other tips for him, would be greatly appreciated.
> > Sincerely,
> > Connie Iddings
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory Alan Bolcer | gbolcer@endeavors.com | work: 949.833.2800
> Chief Technology Officer | http://endeavors.com | cell: 714.928.5476
> Endeavors Technology, Inc. | efax: 603.994.0516 | wap: 949.278.2805
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