Stock Split

Stock Split:

What is it?: A corporate action in which a company divides its existing shares into multiple shares. Although the number of shares outstanding increases by a specific multiple, the total dollar value of the shares remains the same compared to pre-split amounts, because the split did not add any real value.

For example, assume that XYZ Corp. has 20 million shares outstanding and the shares are trading at $100, which would give it a $2 billion market capitalization. The company’s board of directors decides to split the stock 2-for-1. Right after the split takes effect, the number of shares outstanding would double to 40 million, while the share price would be $50, leaving the market cap unchanged at $2 billion.

Why do it?:

First, a split is usually undertaken when the stock price is quite high, making it pricey for investors to acquire a standard board lot of 100 shares. If XYZ Corp.’s shares were worth $100 each, an investor would need to purchase $10,000 to own 100 shares. If each share was worth $50, the investor would only need to pay $5,000 to own 100 shares.

Second, the higher number of shares outstanding can result in greater liquidity for the stock, which facilitates trading and may narrow the bid-ask spread.

While a split in theory should have no effect on a stock’s price, it often results in renewed investor interest, which can have a positive impact on the stock price. While this effect can be temporary, the fact remains that stock splits by blue chip companies are a great way for the average investor to accumulate an increasing number of shares in these companies.

Life Lessons from an Inexperienced Nobody #1

Talk to the waitress. Be friendly to the bartender. Have a conversation with the barber. Ask the Uber driver how his day is going. Make small talk with the doorman. Tell the cashier to have a blessed day. Talk about the Yankees with the janitor at work.

They’re people.

Treat people like people. You’ll never regret it.

My Least Favorite Month

July.

July is my least favorite month. Which is a shame because the weather is beautiful and it was always accompanied by summer break growing up.

Things kickoff with the 4th of July. A celebration of a/an (pick your poison) historical event to be sure, but also a constant reminder of how little people truly know or care about history.

I will never for the life of me understand fireworks. They are the same thing every. Single. Year. And they are literally, at their core, just extremely loud noise and colors in the sky. And yet every. Single. Year. People act like they have never seen colors before. “OOH, AHHH!” It’s not like there is Van Gogh in the sky. A black backdrop of night is painted with what amounts to speckled colors in the form of dots. And sometimes the dots will turn into streams. Wooooow. And sometimes they will turn into rudimentary smeared images of smiley faces or American flags that are the equivalent of me telling my 6 year old cousin that the colored pencil drawing of what amounts to lines and scribbles is beautiful artwork that we’ll have to put on the fridge. For something that takes SO much work in the timing and the boats filled with explosives and the safety hazards and everything else that goes into fireworks, you would think there would be a practical payoff. But nope. Instead, every. Single. Year. Everyone pretends like they didn’t see the same damn thing last year, and the year before that, and the year before that…

Sorry for the rant. I will just never understand why we gather for at least an hour in massive annoying crowds of people to sit on itchy lawns in the heat to listen to BANGS! for an hour and pretend like it’s a) pretty and b) patriotic. Maybe if there was a symbolic story attached about the sounds of war in the backdrop of the night that would teach a lesson in history. But truly I don’t mind July 4th otherwise. I enjoy the grill-outs, the pool/beach, the family gathering or otherwise social aspect of it.

“If we don’t mark the milestones, we’re just passing with the time.”

It’s truly a brilliant quote from a show that I consider to be up in the ranks of Sorkin for best TV shows of all-time in Billions.

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But my gripe isn’t with the 4th of July in and of itself. My issue with fireworks simply marks the preamble of my annual boiling frustrations. Because the 4th of July is just a reminder of my impending birthday only 6 days later.

July 10th. Where to begin. Starting small…kids growing up with summer birthdays never get parties. At least the poor ones don’t. No one is bringing in cupcakes for the class. All your friends are at summer camp or on vacation. I had a sleepover with two friends once. And that was a big to-do. I went cosmic bowling once. Nice.

My father used to fill the whole room with presents. The entire damn room. Sure, maybe it just seemed that way to my young, wide eyes. But I’ll tell you, I can still see it. My mom would drive me an hour every other weekend where my father and I had court-ordered, monitored visitation at a facility every other Saturday. It had a playground. We’d play catch. I’d always put my hand up to his to see if my hands were ever going to be as big as the hands attached to the 6 foot 5 mass of what passed for a man. I’d often secretly stretch my fingers as much as I could daily growing up because I wanted my hands to be as big as his. I don’t even know if he would ask what I wanted for my birthday. In my mind, he just knew. And every last present was perfect. Because he knew me. I was his son. He was my dad.

And then one Saturday, the day before my 8th birthday, I ran into the room where there were supposed to be countless presents. But there weren’t any. It was empty. He wasn’t there. He hadn’t showed up. There was no reason why. The nice lady at the desk didn’t know why. My mom didn’t know why. And that was okay. Maybe he was sick. We’d just come back next time and he’d be there. Except he wasn’t. And the nice lady at the desk told my mom that there was no reason to keep driving all the way out. She’d call my mom if he ever showed up. And that was okay. I was confused but I couldn’t be sad. That’d break my mom. I’d ask her a few times over the next month or so if they had called her. They hadn’t. And so I stopped asking. And then that part of my life was over. I never saw him again.

I guess he ran to hide from the cops. My mom seems to think he went and lived with his mother where they couldn’t force him to pay child support. I’m sure that $54 a month was hard to come by. Lord knows my mom could have used it. I guess a few years ago he ran down a drug dealer, probably his drug dealer, with his car and was being sued for it.

I really hate my birthday. I’ve never told anyone that. I tried to tell a group of people once but I couldn’t find the right words to explain how I felt about it. People ask me what I want for my birthday. If I’m doing anything fun for my birthday. He didn’t have to ask. This is the part where I don’t know how to find the right words to explain how I feel about it. It just fills me with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. It allows fake friends to showcase the one time they reach out to you a year and ask you how you’re doing so you can give an answer as fake as they are because that’s all they want to hear. What most people seem to find a reminder of how many friends they have every year serves to amplify how little people truly care about me. It reminds me that I used to have a father. And he left me twice. That I used to have a sister and a brother. And they left. I used to have a stepfather. And he left. Everyone eventually leaves. My mom and I’s relationship has never been the same since she checked out. I could never tell her how I feel about any of these things because then that means that she wasn’t good enough. Even though she gave me everything I am today.

I told her once when I was growing up that I would find my father when I got older because I wanted to know his reason for leaving his son. She got very offended. If I’m not with her, I’m against her. So I was never allowed to feel this way about any of it.

I’ve been realizing the last 2 years that my memory isn’t what it once was. It really used to be a fortress. I’m not bragging, it genuinely is a lot of the reason I was able to be as successful as I was in school. Now I don’t even remember stories people tell me happened that I was directly involved with. I thought it was my bad concussion. Or just growing up. Maybe it’s actually because it’s just easier to forget. That’s a sad coping mechanism to have developed.

It’s not all bad. It taught me never to complain. It taught me to find satisfaction within the cards your dealt and not to bother thinking about the cards that you weren’t dealt. It taught me to find good fatherly qualities in teachers and coaches and other people’s dads because I already had the entire playbook on the bad qualities. And it taught me that I’m going to be the best damn father because of it.

Maybe this is a bunch of bloviating. Maybe it’s just a bunch of loud noises and bright colors that have no true meaning. Maybe it’s ridiculous that I feel this way. Maybe if I told anyone these things they’d think I’m begging for attention about something that happened years and years ago. Who knows.

What I do know is that I hate my birthday. But – if we don’t mark the milestones, we’re just passing with the time. So here’s to the 22nd milestone of my birth.

I’ll see you at the fireworks next year.

 

Pyrrhic Victory

A Pyrrhic victory (PEER-ik VIK-tree) is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way, though the heavy toll negates a true sense of achievement or profit.

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James G. Blaine had difficulty gaining the Republican nomination in 1876 – “Another victory like this and our money’s gone!”