Stock Market Special Interest

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Has anybody else been through a stock market (or other financial market) special interest? I am currently going through my second phase of this (last time was in 2004-05).

I was thinking that this is a special interest that could potentially make people with AS do very well financially. All of the AS qualities seem a perfect match to success in financial markets: the ability to acquire a lot of knowledge, accumulate facts about companies and their financing, notice patterns, and the ability to be contrarian and not follow the crowd.

I am somewhat active on a stock market discussion board and it is amazing how many NTs justify their investments by appealing to the fact that others on the discussion board have also bought it, therefore it must be good value. There have been several occasions in the last few months where I become very unpopular for suggesting a company is relatively overvalued and subsequently endure abuse by investor's, only for the price to crash and my views validated.

On the other hand I have also identified companies which are 'under the radar', very undervalued, and which nobody seems interested in. I sit there amazed that I can buy something so cheaply, and there is barely anyone to talk to about it because people like to follow the crowd and buy what is popular.

The more I think about it, the more persuaded I become that people with AS have a huge advantage. I then came across this chap named Michael Burry, who really corroborated everything I had concluded.

His story is awesome, one of the very few people who seen the financial crisis coming and who profited enormously from it: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/feat ... rpt-201004 and http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/ ... enius.html

I love some of the quotes relating to this guy! e.g. "People with Asperger’s couldn’t control what they were interested in. It was a stroke of luck that his special interest was financial markets and not, say, collecting lawn-mower catalogues. When he [Burry] thought of it that way, he realized that complex modern financial markets were as good as designed to reward a person with Asperger’s who took an interest in them. “Only someone who has Asperger’s would read a subprime-mortgage-bond prospectus,” he said."

Actually lately, I've taken up some interest in it. I signed up for a stock simulator site and plan on taking a day or two to research as much as I can about the stock market and then start practicing online with the simulator for some time before I actually start investing. I don't want to get rich, but I do want to be able to make enough money off of it to pay my rent and bills while I am finishing school. I refuse to go on the social welfare system because of Aspergers or Autism.

It was in a TV interview with Michael Burry that I first heard about Asperger's and began my journey.

Yes, I think if the market is a special interest, it would be possible to make money. For me, the market is only a light interest, but probably still more so than anyone else I know personally.

Actually, in recent years, I've become more interested in investments in general. My goal is to avoid losing all my savings, if we really are headed for a finincial Armageddon in the near future here in the U.S. There's so much conflicting advice out there these days.

I don't know if this qualifies as a "special interest", though.

For me it's an interest, but not a "special interest". I don't really enjoy reading through company reports and financial news and such, so I haven't done very well in it in the past and got a bit discouraged. But I would like to try my hand at short-term automated trading in futures or forex sometime, when I've got the time to devote to it. I think that would actually be really interesting and potentially very profitable (though also very risky).

I'm not interested in it but when I was a teenager I had a NES game called "Wall Street Kid" where nearly all you did in the game was buy and sell stocks. I had fun playing it.

I have an interest in investing, sometimes it's an obsession but sometimes not. I even went to school for dual degrees in Accounting and Finance, but had to quit due to health issues. I'm planning on going back soon.

By studying accounting I learned what goes into the financial reports that companies put out, and from there I got to where I could read the reports and backtrack to see what decisions were made that year, and I know enough about running a business to see how those decisions will most likely effect the company the following year. It's a bit complicated, but, I and the people who followed my stock tips were among the few who didn't lose money in the recession. One stock has even gone up quite a bit since I recommended it a few years ago.

I too find it strange that people will buy a stock based on the fact that a complete stranger bought it. It defies the whole "if your friends jumped off a bridge" thing.

YES!

I was obsessed with the stock market for four years. Oddly enough it started the summer of 2001 and it got very interesting around the Autumn of that year. I got back into it in 08 for a few months
Mostly though for me it was collecting charts in are newspaper. And making my own graphs in Excel. It was all about the numbers!
And then I did the same with the weather for years.

I still check out the Stock Market everyday on Google Finances or Yahoo.


I'm still obsessed with graphs, charts, statistics, and even just numbers.

This is an older thread I would like to see revived. Any aspies out there actively looking at Financial Markets?

I have no doubt there are many aspies well suited to extracting money from financial markets by identifying patterns in price data. It is a natural fit for some of us. I have been watching markets and swing trading for about five years. There must be others out there.

I love the stock market even though I don't invest in it. My dad has Intel stock and I watch it closely. I believe the Dow will hit 14,000 in the near future. The Nasdaq will struggle because that is where Intel stock is, since Nasdaq is a lot of technology stocks. Intel will continue to go down while the others skyrocket. I know the economy isn't great right now. I look at economic reports all the time. I don't know the math associated with the stock market because my math skills are very limited. Speaking of investing have you seen the show "Shark Tank?" While it doesn't have to do with the stock market itself, it does with investing into companies. I try to watch it every week. Its on Friday. I don't watch it on TV I watch it on the Internet. Right now I don't even know if I am up or imagining everything. I believe I am in the middle of a dream. Although it kinda sorta looks realistic. All Intel does is go down. It used to be 120 a share and it split many times. What we had was worth something... actually a lot. In fact one year we were able to afford 2 new cars and pay them outright. Don't forget going to the Panama Canal. I went on a cruise there and had the biggest room on the entire ship. Then we drove cross country. We could do whatever we wanted. Now its about 20 a share. Now we sometimes have to rely on other people to pay for the trips if we even go on one. Now when we go on a cruise, we get the very smallest room. Last year grandpa paid for it because we couldn't afford it. Back in the good old days we did everything. When our house sold in the same year, to celebrate we went to the most expensive restaurant in all of New Orleans. We were in the middle of the cross country trip back then. It was the year 2000. Sadly later in the year the tech bubble burst as you probably know. As you can tell if you go to my profile that stock market is one of my interests. The recession in 2008 was awful. Actually the name of that recession was similar to the Great Depression.... it was known as the "Great Recession." One step away from being called a depression. It will take YEARS for it to get back to normal.

It's been a special interest of mine for some time. Love the stock market.

Stock market is my special interest in the long run, over 10 years indeed. I play in a very lazy way, buy and hold for years.
But it's extremely hard for me to communicate with people on stock market most of the time. I either go philosophically deep on certain area or be very ignorant on hot topics.
I don't know how to say... But my choice on stocks are extremely weird.
Currently, I lost interest in stocks. But I know sometime, not knowing how long later, I will get crazy at that again.

I think that would be a very good special interest to have. I'd be investing in the stock market if I had the means to do so.

Wow. I really hope you guys don't mind my jumping in on this thread. I recently posted on the thread discussing neurotypical children with Asperger's parents, because I am starting to realize I may be an NT child of two Asperger's parents.

I'm jumping in here because the stock market "special interest" describes my mother, to a T. She considers her job to be an "investor" (she works from home and invests her own money) and routinely spends 8+ hours a day reading about companies, looking at charts, and watching CNBC. She is afraid to take her eyes off of the market data from Sunday night (when markets open in Asia) through Friday afternoon, and often spends the weekend reading some financial newspaper and circling information in it. Basically, her ability to stick to a ritualistic routine for following the market and her ability to focus on one task for hours seem to translate into her making good investment decisions. From what I'm reading, those two abilities are associated with AS.

It's always been important to me to connect with my mother, and one of the easiest ways to connect with her is through an intellectual hobby or interest, since it's hard to emotionally connect with her. So, a few years ago, I tried to get into stocks so we could share a hobby, and- I couldn't do it. Why? Because following the stocks was too emotional for me. The more I followed it, the more saddened I became about the state of the economy, and I had to stop. (My mom says that if I'd stuck with it I would have made a ton of money on a particular stock.) So, it seems to me that the ability that AS people have to disconnect emotionally and follow a topic intellectually and cerebrally is a HUGE asset when following stocks, especially when the economy is rough.

Oceandrop, as you said, my mom also has the ability to make decisions on stocks that buck the trend. Besides that, she also will buy some stocks (like Apple) because she's able to see the 'mass public' get behind it, and she believes the fact that it has a large following wil help the stock.

By the way, I'm feeling kind of shy as I jump in and post on this forum, so please jump in if anything I say sounds like I am not understanding AS correctly. I am just really amazed to find a thread that describes my mom so well on the first page of the forum.

For those of you who are into the stock market, do you have any additional thoughts on how I can talk about the market with my mother so I can connect with her in a way that works for her? And, as a side note, one of the ways my mom has connected with me is to impress me by learning as much information as she can about my particular hobby, which I REALLY appreciate and didn't ask her to do.