| Investment |
April 11, 2019
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| He retired recently. He received some retirement allowance and he had some savings. But his pension receiving age was far in the future. From his simple calculation, he couldn't live on only those sources of income. He knew this. He could have remained at his company as a temporary worker and at a cheaper salary, but he didn't. He had an idea: to invest. He heard that in other countries, especially western countries, investment was common and workers started to invest from their early age for their future, after retirement. But, in this country, investment was somewhat unpopular. He hadn't had any chances to experience or study about investment until recently. But, he wasn't so pessimistic. He now had a lot of time. This was like killing two birds with one stone. He wanted to enjoy getting 'know-how' of investment, and investments could earn money. But what is investment? He started to check on the internet. There are two major ways to invest for individuals: 'stock' and 'mutual fund'. He vaguely knew  about stock, companies sell their stock to get money for new factories or other things to make their company bigger. If the company became bigger their stocks became higher, because more people would want to buy their stocks. Now he studied: Mutual fund is a package that professionals make of a combination of stocks and/or bonds. Governments, companies and other organizations sell bonds to get necessary money. He knew that large companies' stocks in the US had risen. As a try he checked Amazon. Amazon started their business in 1995. As of 2019, the stock price of Amazon was more than 20 times it was 10 years ago. He checked his purchase history of Amazon, he did it easily at the site. He started to buy books in 2001. Surprisingly he bought 23 books in 2003. He started to use Kindle, an e-reader, in 2010. If he had bought stock of Amazon at that time, for example a thousand dollars, it would have become more than 20,000 dollars. Of course this is just an 'afterthought'. He should look for the 'next Amazon'. He could go to a stock brokerage firm and ask for a recommendation of stocks and/or mutual funds. But, in that case, he would lose a chance to study about investments from scratch because a stock brokerage firm would probably want to sell him anything as early as possible. He wanted to start with more basic things. He started to think: 1. Most countries use a free economy system. People can sell any products, any services as long as the laws allow. Restaurants need a license to avoid rotten food. Banks need a license to get trust from customers. Car makers need a license to make safe cars. The government makes rules and systems to maintain the system and it needs cost and they gather it as taxes. Governments prepare an education system to raise good workers, they construct roads, bays, airports to help companies export their products, etc. 2. People can live anywhere and buy anything. As people can buy anything, companies have to compete by thinking of their needs. If the quality of the item is better than the other, people will buy it. If the quality was similar, people would buy the cheaper one. Makers want to make products cheaper, they seek cheaper conditions: cheaper workers, cheaper utility costs, cheaper transportation costs. But, they also think about risks. They don't want gangs demanding ransom for their workers. They don't want the government to demand additional taxes. They don't want disasters, like typhoons, to hit their factory, etc. 3. Companies have to adjust to new things. New technology has appeared. Advanced freezing technology has enabled cheap and good tasting sushi restaurants to expand. Convenience stores use precise customer data to predict consumer needs/wants. Some researchers predicted that convenience stores would decline when supermarkets started to expand their business time to late hours, but they have survived. He was amazed at their items' efficiency. One time net shopping was thought to defeat real shops completely. But he had heard that Amazon started real shops somewhere. Big stores like Wal-Mart have remained. He had read that one researcher wrote, "Consumers want to check on the internet and buy at a real shop after checking its color, texture, the feeling to have, etc." He was amazed because before he had heard often the opposite thing, "People tend to buy on the internet after checking it in a real shop because it will become cheaper." Bookstores were another business that seemed to have no future. When he bought a Kindle machine, he thought so. With the machine he could change the size of letters. It was very good for his old sight. The machine could keep more than a thousand books. He easily downloaded them by one click. But after several years, he stopped using the machine. Now he bought books and never used the machine. He liked to place books unread on the stand. Depending on his feeling, he would take one of them off the stand and start to read from the page that was book-marked. He might finish after 10 pages or so, and move onto another book. He liked this thing. It gave him a sense of natural freedom. (To be continued ... ) |
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*investment :投資
*retirement allowance :退職金
*mutual fund :投資信託
*bond :債権
*stock brokerage firm :証券会社
*afterthought :後知恵