When to Buy Stocks -- Demand Value | Don't Follow the Crowd

Investing In Yourself – Using Pillars to Build Your Core	https://urbanomics.blogspot.com/2015/04/urbanomics-pillars-path-set-for.html
Setting Budgets + Saving for Black Swans	https://urbanomics.blogspot.com/2013/02/personal-finance-budget-101-free-credit.html
	https://urbanomics.blogspot.com/2019/11/hey-henry-high-earner-not-yet-rich.html
How to Open My First Brokerage Account	https://urbanomics.blogspot.com/2015/04/personal-finance-101-starting.html
Diversify your Life (Mind, Body, Soul, + Investments) HOW TO SEARCH MY BLOG:	Get Updates to Your Email When I Create A New Post:

Coming soon is a post on Health -- The Body. You have to invest and know the data about your body. Like many people of color, I get nervous about hospitals and doctors. Thanks to my corporate job, I was exposed to annual exams and blood tests. Unfortunately, when I made the shift to being an entrepreneur I didn't keep up with my annual exams. And it may be costing me...stay tuned for a future post on Health and how that impacts your Wealth. 

Also Coming Soon - a series on #HowtoInvest. People have been reaching especially after the spikes in Gamestop, AMC, and other stock to learn the basics. I self taught myself how to invest beginning at the age of roughly 18 and have never stopped. To be a good investor and ensure you are not gambling (speculating), I'll cover (hardest parts of investing in RED):

Budgeting 101 - How to Fund Ur Investments?

Why Stocks as an Investment?

What is Ur Investment Profile + Personality?

How to Pick Stocks?

When to Buy Stocks?

How to Enter My Trade?

How Many Stocks Should I Own?

When to Sell Stocks?

Am I Speculating (Gambling)?

When to Buy A Stock

Enough talking -- pictures and videos are worth a thousand words, so I plan to move into the digital age here soon. I'm an old soul in a millennial body with a 9-5 job and a side hustle empowering underrepresented groups to find employment in the technology field (and it's cash flowing almost better than my 9-5 job!). Oh by the way, I own real estate (with tenants) and trying to grow that portfolio. So be patient as I plan to do a video series that will help you invest in yourself and #getthebag. My best asset class is my stock portfolio and yes, it allowed me to semi-retire at 37. I've documented how I've done it here on my blog (mistakes and all) for the last 15+ years. Don't believe people that say it's easy --- Trust But Verify. If they are NOT teaching you how to do it yourself --- Then You Are The Product. #facts

Leading up to my video series, which you've been asking for, here is an example of how I hunt for stocks. Sometimes I rely on my network of friends in my #MansaMusa network. They've helped me build my mini empire and I appreciate all of them as they've support me in different ways. When I got started I had a few #whentobuy rules. Last week, I shared Rule #2 - Follow Da Leader | Whale Watch | Griot Rule. Warren Buffett was great to read about, learn from, and occasionally follow but he is one smart brotha...he often requests and usually get approved the right to withhold some of his biggest trades. Why? So he can slowly build a large position and limit Griot watchers like me from following him. There are federal rules which require Warren to disclose his trades and he doesn't want his stock investments to skyrocket right away (from copycats) before he's built his large stake. I may not be a Griot yet, but like my father I'm a like to preach and teach. So I can't give everything away...I know my worth but I USUALLY try to make investments that align with my goals, risk tolerance, and personality. Two hints at what I mean and then I get to a few stocks on my subscriber list and one reveal.

Wanting Value:

  Hint 1: For years, I've written about the fact that I won't by a candy bar if I can't get it for 50c. For the longest time, that's what a Reese's or Snickers cost growing up. Yes, I believe in inflation but if you don't sell it to me for 50c or a Kings size bar for $1.00...you're not getting my money. Life is full of transactions and negotiations...I choose when I want to participate. 

A Difference of Opinion:

Hint 2: I personally like to go against the grain and as many have said...I like to walk my own path and don't follow the crowd too often. So if I see a stock getting dissed (Ex: Search for my Tesla or Lululemon trades and read my Elon Musk / Kanye West posts from years before), I tend to want to know more about the situation than just go with the crowd. Group think is very dangerous and is a primary reason why racism and oppression is what it is. Human nature is to seek the protection and worthiness from a group or gang...but it can lead to perverse outcomes - like when gangs have no rules and kids get killed, or when people with authority protect the bad apples in their group, or when people claim to have faith in something higher but the angry mob can lynch (skin color) or rape (young woman) because society or the current cultural climate doesn't communicate to them what they are doing is wrong. And then I hear the narrative, don't try and cancel those things people did back because it was a different time. I have one one --- Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You. I don't think in life you can ever "overlook" lynching, hate, rape, bullying ...because everyone was doing it. So When I invest...if most are doing it...I run the other way. Need one last example, we all celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and his approach to non-violence today. But in the 1960s, the FBI had him high on the list of public enemy #1s. How do you square that away...in my book non-violence teaching does not = terrorist (or communist for that matter) but they spent years watching and taping his every moves. So I take the same approach to stocks, if everyone jumps off the bandwagon I BUY:

- Elon Musk is an idiot for $420 tweet -- nice try, I invest in a genius and Tesla

- Kanye West is mentally crazy -- He's not the president, my mentor, impactful to my daily life...but IMO he seems to be savvy at music and business...oh by the way he's now worth over 5-6 Billion after a well executed clothing partnership with Gap. I don't have to agree with him to know he's going to appreciate in value: 

URBANOMICS: TESLA - MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED INVESTMENT

- Lulemon is finished after the then idiot CEO made harsh comments about plus-sized women and leggings -- He's a bum get rid of him and people still will buy ridiculously price leggings, yoga pants and clearly Yeezy's. 

URBANOMICS: Value Investing - Look4Leaders / FollowUrGut

#GettheBag - Premium Subscriber Alerts

Here are a few stocks from this Quarter's Subscriber List Premium Alerts:

• I***** - Beaten down technology company, that may get back up after being knocked back down
• M**** - With everyone jumping on the hot new thing...the old reliable has been thrown away. It may to soon to ask an old star to retire when the team isn't ready for a transition
• A**** - This company stumbled and decided not to IPO. But the SPAC route seemed like an ideal fit. No one's paying attention but the re-opening trade could have us running around like Mad Men
• F**** - Good ole fashion insurance was left out in the cold, but whoa interest rates are rising and everyone is jumping on banks, insurance and other interest rate sensitive stocks. 

Reveal - ViacomCBS (VIAC)

• V**** - Television and Advertising has been left for dead as streaming is the future. A quote taken from Barron's: "An analyst wrote that the recent run-up “doesn’t fully discount risks” from pressure on V****’s own legacy cable-network business, nor the risks to content-licensing revenue from the crumbling of conventional cable channels."

Haters gonna hate. Our Reveal is we own ViacomCBS (VIAC), recently the best performing stock in the S&P 500. Stay tuned for a "Details" writeup...but wondering when did I blog about ViacomCBS, Sept 2020:

URBANOMICS: How Being Risk Focused Allows Me to Play Defense + Offense

If you want to follow the crowd, by all means go ahead. However, I'd rather walk my own path. Reach out if you want to subscribe and monitor the trades I'm making in my portfolio. 

Also, guess the stock and I'll reveal if you're right.

NIA | Purpose - Purpose Driven Investing

 What is your Purpose? I've heard the best inventors, investors, musicians, and operators in the world are driven almost to madness to achieve their mission or purpose. If you recall my post of Netflix movies, you'll find a show called "Mindhunters". This show follows the development of the FBI's first behavioral analysis unit. No disrespect to local law enforcement, but it helped them stop guessing and use clues from the crime scene to narrow down a subject based on their behavior. One of the key persons in the show was an academic that first assisted the FBI as this unit was being developed. What stuck with me was she said after years of interviewing and analyzing people, CEOs and Politicians often have similar traits to the psychopaths they were tracking, interviewing, and studying. So a subtle reminder to be careful in your purpose driven mission because it's a thin line between helping people and filling your self-interest bucket.

So on day 5 of Kwanzaa I challenge you to find your purpose by finding ways to serve. The inventors who solve society's problems are celebrated. Facebook is my rolodex to everyone in my life before their were cell phones (I know imagine there was a time without cell phones). And what a compromise, I hate their data privacy practices but occasionally log on so I no longer have to keep a spreadsheet of my contacts (yes years back I kept a spreadsheet). Today my buddies on Wall Street are falling over themselves for ESG Investing. ESG is short for environmental, social, and corporate governance. So you mean the smartest nation in the world just NOW realized that we should be interested in preserving our planet, social justice and diversity issues, and ensuring that those CEOs who use their power to have relationships with their subordinates maintain good corporate governance. Wow it's 2020 and I need my billionaire friends on Wall Street telling me that ESG is in vogue and now is the time to move away from coal and eventually transition to electric, wind, hydrogen, and other solutions. I need my billionaire buddies to tell me its time to measure how many people of color and women are employed at some of the largest companies in the world AND more importantly how many of those persons are in senior management and C-Suite roles (positions of real power). It's hard for me to take them seriously because I see historically what I saw with colonialism. You stayed with strategies (slavery, coal, colonization, globalization) until they served your "purpose"...and then you peaced out.

So for me my overriding purpose is to serve by teaching those how I continue to build my core, my pillars. Being independent, able to strategically think on my own, able to complete in any setting in any part of the world means I am not easily influenced. We all have obstacles:

• When my last employer couldn't support the need for me to take care of an elderly parent in their golden years -- my approach allowed me to leave
• When I was told not to purchase a home on the South Side of Chicago - my purpose was public/private, a play on doing something that was good for me and my community. My home will double in price soon as I bought during the depths of recession (buy low, sell high) and I assisted in stabilizing my community
• When I first started as an independent contractor people told me I needed the safety of Corporate America -- haha I remembered laughing often and telling people companies stopped offering pensions decades ago. My CEO buddies come on CNBC and speak everyday and must hit quarterly earnings targets. Let's just say, they'll do what they have to make the numbers. I'm not concerned because with my dedication to my craft and 3 certifications, I have the confidence that I will be one of the few left standing --- but am I describing a job or the cutthroat show "Survivor". So I struck out on my own, negotiated deals in my favor, and actually stumbled into the best of both worlds. I have both a Corp job and a startup...funny thing is my client asked me to come on full-time...not me.

My startup company is to invest in people that are underrepresented in Corporate America so we can get them in the door. Next, I plan to invest in real estate for persons that usually get the worst housing selections because no one there isn't much choice for low-income Americans. I also want to create a hedge fund or wealth advisory/family office firm in the next 5-7 years. They don't know it but my mentors: Peter Lynch, Warren Buffet, Cathie Woods, Mario Gabelli, Seth Klarman, John Rogers and a few others have dropped enough nuggets over the years that my investing portfolio is achieving it's purpose - giving me an opportunity to retire early, invest in other projects, and donate to worthy causes.

So I challenge you to define your NIA, and together let's serve with a purpose by investing in our community and the world. God bless 

Stock Update: Today I am employing Tax Loss Harvesting. If you had a big year, many wins in your portfolio...did you know that yes the tax code allows you to sell losers in your portfolio and they offset the gains. You can carry a loss of $3K into the next tax year, no fear the government is here. But imagine that, most middle class Americans can't take advantage of this because they don't own stocks or manage their own portfolios.