I bought some Apple the other day. Or rather, I bought some AAPL. I felt inspired and I noticed I had a little cash sitting in my RRSP. I'm not a big investor and I'm not a particularly good investor. I tend to be the "buy, hold and forget" type. The Apple thing just kind of came out of the blue. I find it doesn't make much difference if I research a company or not. The ones that I read up on and convince myself are poised to do great things are just as likely to flop as the ones that I just guess look cool. So right now, Apple looks cool. A few years ago, I though AMD looked cool, and they're my best performer now. Well, that is to say AMD has made some gains while I've been holding the stock. They've been up and down in the mean time though. I suppose if they do really well then I should... Sell the stock. Strange way to reward a company that's done a good job with your investment - take the money away.

Of course I've probably just doomed AMD to bankruptcy, but hey, that's what life's like in my portfolio. Witness 8x8. I read their name in a CNN article on VoIP last year. That was when their stock was about twice what it is now. Or better yet, we could talk about that darling Xybernaut. What kind of a name is that? I was just excited to find that there's a company making wearables that I could invest in. I guess wearable computers are more of a ... niche item, to put it politely. My investment there went from $500 to $9. Apparently that's what it cost me to learn that people don't want to look like freaks with computerized collars.

My other holdings are a little less exciting, some Nortel that was doing pretty well until I decided to increase my stake. I think that every Canadian has to buy some Nortel whether they like it or not. I remember hearing at one point they were about 30% of the TSX. I don't think that's even close to true anymore. There was concern (reasonably so) that swings in Nortel had a serious impact on the country's largest market. The effect is magnified because of the multiplying effect of many index funds that track the TSX in some way. I guess that's not an issue any more. Apparently the economy survived the huge drop in Nortel share value since the bubble burst. Finally, aside from a couple index funds, I have some Bell (BCE). They were a safe bet for a while. Now they've lost me a little bit of money, but I'm not sure if I'm going to sell yet or not. Give it a week and I'll forget about it again. See, I'm that 'buy, hold and forget' type of investor.