New job

Mostly out of sheer boredom and too much time on my hands, I've taken up a new job for kicks: day trading. And what do you know, it's not that hard as long as you follow this very simple rule: Buy low, sell high! Who knew it was that easy?

So along with my random rants, raves and general thoughts on love, life, travel and food, I will also give you some investment advice, dear reader.

First, you need to make sure you have an investment company that gives you free trades because otherwise you'll just end up losing all your money to commissions and fees. If you open up a PMI account with Wells Fargo, you get 100 free trades - not enough for a serious day trader, but enough to fool around a bit for the summer at least. The minimum balance required for a no-fee PMI account at WF is $25K, but the secret to this is that you only need to have a 25K balance on the last day of each month, not throughout the month.

Second, for long-term investments, invest in companies you believe in. For me that usually means investing in companies whose products I think are excellent and will remain excellent or get even better.

Third, for short to medium-term investments, look for the stocks that have dropped the most that day or recently but you believe will be on the rise soon. Maybe it was divine luck but yesterday I had the dumbluck idea to invest in banks. Why? I don't know...because I really like the bank and credit card company I use and thought their stock value was just way too low. And tada: today alone my gains are 7.75% on the bank stock and 2.7% on the credit card stock. I realize it was sheer luck that analysts upgraded bank stocks this morning, which helped the jump significantly.

Ok, that is my non-professional, seriously amateur advice on investing. Please note that the author is not liable for any losses you may suffer from undertaking this advice but if you make any gains, feel free to send me a commission check.