Welcome to Sherwood Forest

I would like to offer up a big thank you to everyone who has decided to join me on this wonderful adventure. The point of this blog is two part:

1. First and foremost, I am writing this blog to keep me accountable
2. The second purpose of this blog is to provide a medium in which I can have conversation with the masses

Accountability

I am part of the average population when it comes to making new year resolutions. I've picked up new hobbies (and dropped them), I've promised to lose weight (and gained it back); you name it, I've done it (and given up). This year I'm trying to do something that I've always been interested in and feel like I'm finally in a place where I can actually try it. This year (and hopefully for the rest of my life) I am sticking my toe into the investing world. 

I am doing this as a means to secure my own financial independence and also to live with the thrills of the ups and downs of the stock market. This opportunity was made possible by the creation of the Robinhood investing app. In case you don't know about Robinhood, it's a mobile based broker that draws people into its platform by offering the benefit of no trading fees and no minimum balance. The only drawback of this free program is that you cannot day trade or trade on margin without upgrading to Robinhood instant.

Interaction

The second part of my goal is to learn. I love to try to learn new things everyday and love the challenges that go with it. Along my journey to financial independence, I will be trying new things that work and new things that don't work all so that I can say that I've tried it and to be able to learn from my experiences. I'm hoping that I am able to help people follow my path if I'm successful or show them what not to do if I am less than successful in addition to allowing people to teach me things that they have learned along their path of success.

About Me

Now that I've put my goals out in the open, I'm sure that you're wanting to know a little about myself. At the time that I am writing this, I'm 25 years old and working as an accountant. I graduated from a public university with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. I like numbers in every possible way and try to apply that passion in everything I do. I am great at using Excel and have written programs in C before but have lost that ability due to lack of use. I have a partial knowledge of R also. Along this path of financial success, I figure that I'll have to learn (or relearn) how to use different languages to build analytical models. So, I am currently working my way through the Python tutorial on Codecademy as I have found a website that allows free backtesting of quantitative models as long as you write your model in Python. There will be more on this later once I complete my current model. I am also adding 'Learn SQL' to my to do list as SQL will be a valuable skill to add to my career quiver.

As for my financial background, I have taken courses in college about insurance, portfolio analysis, options (stochastic calculus), and many basic finance courses but as I have said previously, I am always looking to learn more through online courses and tutorials and just from reading articles and interacting with the public. I have an emergency fund set up along with regular contributions to my 401(k) and am now looking to grow my savings through the stock market.

Thank you for joining me on this adventure and I will be back later today with a brief overview of my current portfolio on Robinhood.