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Alien100
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19 Jul 2013, 10:09 pm

Hello,

I just wanted to know if there are Aspies who are self employed and do not work for someone else, or just work for themselves. I have invested in Websites, but failed, invested in stocks, didn't fail but did not provide enough predictability. I have tried dvd kiosk machines, not home enough to oversee. And now I am involved in real estate, which seems to be the best investment I have ever made, provides allot of predictability. Please let me know what you invest in, and how you have faired with those investments.



EsotericResearch
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19 Jul 2013, 10:36 pm

To supplement my regular income I use stuff like Prosper and Lendingclub as an alternative to CDs. It's definitely not enough to live on atm, but will obviate me of the dishonor of going without any money at all if anything happens. I'm too chicken to do anything equity-ish so I'm sticking to debt instruments for now; they give me the same amount as a decent corporate bond.



Alien100
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19 Jul 2013, 10:45 pm

@EsotericResearch, Thanks for the reply. I did CD's for a while some years ago. Low return rate but low risk. I will start investing in REITS soon. I really would love to replace my current income with passive income.



1401b
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20 Jul 2013, 12:28 am

I've spent most of my life self employed in one way or another, it's great fun, it's amazing how wildly successful you can luck-out to be, you can structure you work around your limitations, and basically the whole world has to fire you to lose your job, not just one kneebiter.
Market investing seems a bit riskier to me, but I did learn an interesting tactic for fast decent cash in Options.
Curiously enough I learned it from a brilliant HOMELESS autistic man with a knack for pattern recognition, who was too scared (of everything) to ever use it himself.
It is surprisingly straightforward.


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ablomov
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20 Jul 2013, 1:57 am

but wheres the inventors ??



Tyri0n
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20 Jul 2013, 2:57 pm

Alien100 wrote:
Hello,

I just wanted to know if there are Aspies who are self employed and do not work for someone else, or just work for themselves. I have invested in Websites, but failed, invested in stocks, didn't fail but did not provide enough predictability. I have tried dvd kiosk machines, not home enough to oversee. And now I am involved in real estate, which seems to be the best investment I have ever made, provides allot of predictability. Please let me know what you invest in, and how you have faired with those investments.


Yeah, I once lost $15,000 in stocks (most of which had been made through stocks to begin with though). I have a system for stocks that works. I just had departed from my system in that instance. I tried to invest in penny stocks without understanding the extent to which purchasing a stock with low volumes and high beta can permanently affect the price. For a stock worth $0.001, you can quickly gain or lose a lot of money. Without sophisticated software, you will likely lose a ton because it becomes impossible to sell your holdings without causing the price to plummet. Furthermore, you can't sell a bit at a time because of the exorbitant fees you will be charged. All in all, it absolutely sucks.

However, now I do not have a large enough amount of capital to make it work. If you could give me $30,000 or so, and my system, it could work.

My system is basically to invest in strong growth companies (usually emerging technologies) during a short-term dip and then cash out with a 5-10% gain within a few weeks. Repeated multiple times, you can hike up your annual rate very high over the long-term (I had a 50% ROI in 2010 in spite of doing it fairly sporadically; had nearly a 40% gain in 2009, but probably so would a monkey throwing darts have had this).

With a large enough seed, I think it could produce 1-2k a month and leave enough left over to grow the pile.



FMX
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21 Jul 2013, 2:10 pm

I suppose I'm an aspie investor - just not a very successful one so far. :) Apart from investing in stocks and managed funds, I've also tried trading e-minis. If I ever have the time, I'd like to try that again, but this time using a purely algorithmic system - no manual trading at all. This is where an aspie really good at pattern recognition would excel! I don't have any "aspie superpowers" like that, sadly.



ParaSait
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21 Jul 2013, 5:17 pm

I gotta say the march-april bitcoin bubble was very lucrative for me. I jumped on and off the bandwagon on pretty much exactly the right moments.
I am quite interested in the stock market, maybe I'll get my hands on that once I get some more money...


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Tyri0n
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21 Jul 2013, 6:50 pm

ParaSait wrote:
I gotta say the march-april bitcoin bubble was very lucrative for me. I jumped on and off the bandwagon on pretty much exactly the right moments.
I am quite interested in the stock market, maybe I'll get my hands on that once I get some more money...


Value investing can be pretty risky. Market timing is the pejorative term. I made a s**t TON of money during the financial crisis and lost a fair amount during the Greek debt crisis in 2010. Worst decision came in 2011 with penny stock investing in Card Activation Technologies during its court case.

At this time, I own Intermec (2D barcode scanning), Stratasys (3D printing), and ExOne (3D printing). I've been pretty happy with these "growth" companies. Growth investing is safer and potentially just as lucrative. I think value investing is a mistake nowadays when sophisticated machines manipulate everything (something that caused issues for me with CDVT).



realityIs
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21 Oct 2013, 5:16 am

I think the correct approach to investing is to "buy" the market -- i.e. have proportional holdings.

This means to use an low cost index fund, such as those from Vanguard.

Research shows that over time fund managers rarely beat index funds, and you have no way of knowing really which manager will be the special one that out-performs the market.

While there is no guarantee of success, if the market goes up, so do your investments.

Using lo-cost funds are key, because overtime management fees will eat your profits.

The other main point is to have enough of a cash reserve so if the market does fall, and you lose your job, you don't have to sell your stocks when the market is down. If you can hold out until it recovers, you should be ok.



one1ai
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17 Nov 2013, 3:47 am

JayCat wrote:
Bitcoin arbitrage was a big topic a few months ago.

The opportunities have now since faded rapidly.

If you are an investor it can be interesting, but me who am part of the grassroots-movement I understand the technology. Cryptocurrencies are not going away just as the internet is not going away. I have technical knowledge in how Bitcoin/Cryptocurrencies work(the concept, I'm not a computer scientist specialising in Cryptography, though if I studied something that's probably what I would like to study), if you want to know clues it's in my signature but I can help with the details as well. I've also offered help to Wikipedians in learning about the technology behind Bitcoin.

Someone in my country Sweden has a Bitcoin exchange company, he's the CEO(unnamed for anonymity) and doesn't understand Bitcoin, doesn't understand how it works. He only understands the economics, I was shocked when I learnt this. Still those who nowadays use the internet don't necessarily understand the http protocol, do they? Still Cryptocurrencies are about money and http is about the internet and the web, mostly the web, so they can't really be compared I think.


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bleh12345
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18 Nov 2013, 4:41 am

Real Estate might not be the best investment depending on where you live. There's a housing bubble in many places. Be careful.



zacb
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18 Nov 2013, 9:23 am

bleh12345 wrote:
Real Estate might not be the best investment depending on where you live. There's a housing bubble in many places. Be careful.


In my area it is quite depressed. Home sales are down and such. But I have an ace in the hole of betting on a factory or two coming to town as well as a market.



lammiu
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06 Dec 2013, 8:24 am

I believe investing in a modest shelter (buy your own home) at the right market timing instead of renting because you got to live anyway whether you've job or no job. Try every effort to lower cost of living is always sensible because less stress during unemployment.


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AutisticMillionaire
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07 Dec 2013, 2:40 am

zacb wrote:
bleh12345 wrote:
Real Estate might not be the best investment depending on where you live. There's a housing bubble in many places. Be careful.


In my area it is quite depressed. Home sales are down and such. But I have an ace in the hole of betting on a factory or two coming to town as well as a market.


Take advantage and profit from the loss of the NT herd, play by their rules as we are better at rules. I own 14+ acres in assorted plots, so I state with authority We are good at investing in real estate and managing property. It's because we pay attention to details where NT's act more by instinct and circumstance.. I love hearing others with AS are investing, as it's really where we need to be to flourish in our current society.

We need to use our assets to elevate not integrate ourselves economically with our NT "peers".


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bleh12345
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07 Dec 2013, 3:22 pm

Interesting points, AutisticMillionaire. If one could think logically and avoid manic investing, it would be good. People on the spectrum might be more likely to do this.

Lammiu, it may be true that we all have to live somewhere. However, it's very hard to time some markets. Also, I'm sure that's what people who got burned in the last bubble said. We all need a place to live, but in a lot of areas with good jobs, buying a house simply costs more. Not to mention you are now tied to an area. Even if you could buy it up front, you still have property taxes and maintenance to worry about.