AOM 3 - The Stock Market

       This past J-Term I had the privilege to be in Dr. Ott's Personal Finance class. One of the few things we focused on the most was the stock market- how it works, how people make a living off of it, and how to invest in it. Dr. Ott especially loved the story of Enron, it's a true Texas story. I just can't believe people would think it was a good idea to invest in a company that was only showing their future earnings, none of which later showed to be correct. It's true that one could try to predict the future of the stock market, but this is generally not very possible. For instance, in our modern past 4 months, we have all been shown the possible volatility of the stock market.
       I'm not necessarily well versed in the stock market, so please bare with me. Because of our international pandemic, many of the facets of our economy have been considered non-essential. Things you'd pay for like haircuts, that cute dog sweater you know Fido needs, even that LED light strip for your room you saw on Tik-Tok, are all considered non-essential. You can either shave your head or suck it up and live with that mullet. Of course, some of these businesses are still working, thanks to the internet we can still buy quite a few things, but it hasn't been anywhere close to the scale things were on before 2020. People around the world are learning how to cook the rest of what's in their pantries and gardens, we're cutting our own hair, and we're ordering much less online (most of us).

        As a result of this great upheaval in the way we're all doing things, there was a stock market crash, starting March 9th, 2020, followed by two more, all three were considered "the three worst point drops in U.S. history." It seems history really does repeat itself. As a result, a lot of people are worried about the long term health of our economy, and how long it will take to recover from this. For us high schoolers, this does not bode well for paying off student debt, and housing costs. 

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