Since I don’t work, I probably follow the news more than the average bear. When you do that, you start to think you know more than most other people.

Violating one of my own guidelines to buy index funds for the long-term and not play individual investments for the short-term, I bought $5K of the oil fund BNO a few weeks ago.

Every few days Trump was saying we had a deal with Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, and the oil prices would drop. Then there wasn’t a deal and the price would spike when he’d threaten to bomb them more. It happened like two dozen times. Until I joined the game.

At that point, oil went down and stayed down. More & more ships started moving through the Strait of Hormuz. According to the US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, 72 ships went through in the last 24 hours as I write this. That’s a lot higher than what we’ve seen for quite awhile.

I only planned on keeping the oil shares for a week or so. I could have sold for a little profit if I had done that. Instead, I lost $619. I reinvested the balance in Google last week.

I’m not disappointed. Not at all. I’m happy they are finding a resolution to the fighting. With the S&P 500 up +7.4% this year, this small oil investment is dust in our overall portfolio.

Have you ever tried to “play the headlines” with investments? What did you learn? I learned I’m a lousy war profiteer … ! 😉

Image; Pixabay; Chart: Apple Stocks