8:30 AM to 3 PM

I've begun investing in the stock market. In fact I invested more than half of my first two weeks pay the day I was paid it. The New York Stock Exchange is open from 9:30 AM to 4 PM Eastern time, which is 8:30 AM to 3 PM Central time. In other words, it opens an hour after I get to work and closes an hour before I leave. My iPhone has a stock tracker so when I am waiting for program to open or a simulation to run or a part to mesh I will take a look and see how my stocks are doing.

So far I haven't done awesome. At one point I was up 4% but now I'm down about 5%. That's part of the game though. On the plus side I am gaining experience. The first few days I would be ecstatic when I made $15 in one day doing nothing, then there was the day I lost more than $40 in one day. Experiencing that has helped me to view the hourly and daily ups and downs with a more level attitude. I will lose money on many days. I will also make money on many days. The hope is that when the time comes to sell the stock the value is higher than when I bought it.

What have I learned? If anything I have learned that stocks typically change values by about 1% per day with 3-4% changes in value being fairly common. There also seems to be somewhat little reason why stocks go up for down. A stock can make a huge 3% swing in a few minutes even though, to the best of my knowledge nothing about the company has changed. Only six and a half hours per day, five days a week, yet it is something that businesses in our country thrive on and rich people use to get really rich. 8:30 to 3, five days a week.