About a month and a half ago, I wrote about my attempts to seek out failure and how, ironically, I had so far failed to find failure. I needn’t have worried, because failure found me: I was let go from my job at The Motley Fool.
To be blunt, this sucks. It sucks a lot. I loved working at The Motley Fool and I really thought it would be the last job I would ever take. I wanted to work there until I retired. I had made a lot of friends there. I thought I was doing good work and important work.
The failure doesn’t stop there, though. Have you heard of Amazon’s new delivery service program? They are essentially looking for entrepreneurial-minded people to help them manage local delivery services. Previously, I had thought it was an interesting opportunity, but didn’t want to apply while I was still in what I considered to be a dream job. One of the first things I did when I heard I was let go was to apply to be a Delivery Service Partner. The automated response I got said a decision could take 4-8 weeks. It only took them 11 days to turn me down.
It’s been a few weeks, and I’m still trying to sort out my emotions. On one hand, I’m disappointed and angry. On another hand, some part of me is almost relieved and maybe even excited. How can that possibly be? Because maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance that this is the best thing that never happened.
This is going to sound over-the-top dramatic and counter-intuitive, but recently I keep thinking back to Infinity War. There’s a quiet scene between Thor and Rocket where they’re discussing all that Thor has lost. In the course of a few days, he’s lost his trusty hammer, his father, his brother, a sister he didn’t even know he had, his best friends, and the majority of his people. The conversations begins with Thor angry and defiant while talking about how rage, vengeance, anger, loss, and regret are all tremendous motivators. However, the anger quickly dissipates as Thor shows uncharacteristic vulnerability. With tears welling up in his eyes, he concedes that if his plan doesn’t work, “What more can I lose?”.
I completely understand my situation is on a whole different planet. I’m not trying to equate losing a job with losing loved ones on any level. I want to make that clear. However, while the circumstances are very different, the sentiment behind, “What more can I lose?” feels very relatable. In some ways, it feels like I’ve hit rock bottom from a career perspective. There appears to be nowhere to go but up from here, and so why not reach for the stars and cast as many nets as possible, to mix metaphors?
In that vein, I want to announce right here and now a new venture: Paul Vs The Market. While working at the Fool, I got a lot more interested in investing. At the same time, there were restrictions on what I could write about in terms of investments. Those restrictions are now gone. This new site will be all about chronicling my attempts to beat the market by investing in individual companies. I’ll lay out what companies I own and why, along with what companies are on my watch-list. My hope is to make it as beginner friendly as possible, and to maybe even be a little educational or spread my interest in investing. I hope you all will check it out, bookmark it, spread the word, and most importantly engage with me. Call me out if I am using obscure terms without defining them. Let me know if I’m blind to some risk in one of my holdings. Suggest alternative companies to look at. The site is still a bit under construction, but the hope is to be ready for a full launch by October 1st, so please check back often.
Does this mean Rampant Discourse is dead? Not at all! In fact, while I have been working mostly on Paul Vs The Market lately, I’ve also been working on a few more items for Rampant Discourse that I’ve been working on for far too long now. PvtM will be focused on investing, but anybody who knows me knows that I won’t stop having opinions on politics, movies, sports, and a myriad of other things.
Oh, and if anybody wants to be business partners on a board gaming cafe, I may know a person…
Hey Paul, Sorry to hear about the job loss. If you send me your resume, I can check at my company for openings. As to PvtM, I am very interested in discussing investing with someone. Let me know if you’d like to get together and pair up for research and what not and discuss ideas. Right now I’m extremely cautious about the stock market as a lot of indicators and measurements have it looking overbought and poised for a downfall. That makes me very nervous about any “long” stock positions. I recently tried to learn how to “short” stocks, but was a little intimidated and never followed through with it.
Anyway, I kind of feel like the way to “play” the stock market is to ride the volatility or find a way to make money in a stagnant market (as I think that’s the best case for the short-mid term).
Thanks, Mike. I would love to discuss investing with you whenever and however you want. You’re right that a lot of indicators seem to indicate that many companies are overvalued right now. The flip side is that those indicators have been showing that for years and if anybody was staying out of the market in preparation for a crash, they’ve missed out on huge gains. That’s why I don’t try to time the market. A downturn is definitely coming, I just don’t know if it’s coming tomorrow or in 5 years. I don’t like shorting stocks because of the possibility of losing more money than you have if you end up being really wrong. Too risky for my liking. One thing you could do is sell some puts if you suspect a downturn is coming soon. Could be a safer thing than shorting.