Overview of blog assignment:
I honestly thought that writing these blog entries each week was a useful exercise. It got me to think and write about things that I normally would not take the time to put into words, or honestly even think about sometimes. On top of that, I used some of the blog entries to catch up on current events and different kinds of news, which was helpful.
Again being honest, I didn't always look forward to writing these, and at a few points let them slip my mind because I just became busy with other homework, work, or other things. After awhile it became difficult to think of things to talk about, and I ended up spending more time on it than I would've liked.
Overall though I think that it is a good semester long assignment that serves its purpose effectively.

One class that I haven't talked a lot about this year is my Chinese class. The semester has gone pretty smoothly. We have quizzes a few times a week to make sure that we are learning the characters, and do a lot of practicing and practice to form correct sentences. We also have a character workbook to help us learn the characters, and a regular workbook where we do translations and interpretations. The tests that we have had so far have gone pretty well, and I'm on track to get an A in the class. Overall it has been a good experience and my teacher is definitely one of the better ones that I have had.

Another of my classes, my finance class, has been fairly interesting as well. Recently we have been going over different "cases," or real life situations that concern different banks or companies offering products that are related to the class. For instance, the case that I worked on was about Bank of America offering investors what are known as reverse-convertible bonds. These products are bonds that allow the issuer, in this case Bank of America, to convert them to stocks at the day of maturity. This is desirable for Bank of America because if the stocks are worth less than the principal amount that they would have to repay, they make a lot of money off of the product. After analysis of the product, it really is not an attractive product to investors because of the large potential that you could just lose a lot of money if you are repaid in worthless stock. It has been fun to learn about a complicated product and I look forward to doing it more.

It's been awhile since I talked about my classes and how they are going, so that's what I will be doing over the next few blog posts.
The econ class I am taking, Game Theory and Strategy, has been more difficult than I expected, and has definitely been the most difficult econ course I have taken so far. Recently we have been focusing less on theory and more on applications of what we have learned. We have been learning about Auction Theory and Collective Action problems, which are very common situations in a lot of different real world jobs, especially politics. In addition to that, we have been learning a lot about Behavioral Economics, and why people do/do not always make rational choices when confronted with certain situations. It has been more fun to learn about these types of things rather than learning just theory with lots of math.

So the reason that the attorney general of New York actually served DraftKings and FanDuel with cease and desist orders is because the state claims that it is just a thinly veiled type of gambling. They assert that there isn't really any skill involved and it is more random chance that leads to winning, which is essentially gambling. And, of course, gambling is illegal in the state of New York, meaning these companies would not be able to operate there. They would lose out on a big chunk of revenue, and set precedence for other states to ban them as well.
Honestly I tend to agree with the state of New York on this matter, as I have actually checked these websites out it really is nothing but a glorified type of gambling. They use manipulative advertising to lure players into thinking that it is a game of skill, when it is essentially impossible to predict how each player will do each week.

So getting  back to the two sports betting companies DraftKings and FanDuel. They were sent cease and desist letters last week from the attorney general of New York state, demanding that they stop making money of New York citizens. Both of the companies had five days to stop or file suit against the cease and desist orders. They both decided to file suit against the attorney general and the state, and ask the court to rule that the companies business is legal in the state. This allows them to continue their operations in the state until a ruling is made in the court, although it has put a damper in their day-to-day, and made some people maybe a little wary of the business going forward.

There are currently two companies that are in a legal battle in New York after the District Attorney filed suit to prevent them from doing business.These companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, are fantasy sports betting sites that allow players to draft weekly teams and bet money on their team and pit them against other teams. They are notorious amongst the sports community because of their extremely large number of commercials and the questionable amount of money that they claim people can win on their site. In the state of New York, they recently had a suit filed against them claiming that the sites were simply a gambling website, which would be illegal. Next time I will go into more detail about the legal situation.

Quarter 3 economic statistics are out now and being analyzed by a lot of economists, so I just want to talk a little about the findings and what they mean going forward.
Real GDP increased by 1.5% from the second quarter, and when compared to the growth from the second quarter, which was 3.9%, growth slowed down a considerable amount. Some of the key areas of the growth came from consumer spending, with spending on services increasing significantly. Among that area, spending on health care was the biggest category increase.
Some of the things that offset GDP growth was a decrease in inventory investment on the part of businesses. A reason for this could be because of the rise in consumer spending in the services area rather than wholesale, and businesses noticing that and adjusting accordingly.
Along with the decent GDP growth over the past couple of quarters, the job market has also been turning around from the last few years. Unemployment has been dropping steadily, and employers are opening up new jobs and hiring more and more people. These are signs of a recovering economy, but at the same time things could turn around just as quickly as they have before.

There has been a push by China recently to have its currency become one of the currencies that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stores as a lending reserve. This is a big move for China, as it is a bid to help it become an even larger economic power in the world. The IMF is an international organization that countries can request funds from to help finance different projects that they may have.
If China is successful, and the IMF takes in their currency as one of their currencies, the value of the currency will likely increase significantly. This means that all of the money that China, and the Chinese people, currently have gets more valuable, meaning China just got a lot richer and has more leverage with their currency. It will be interesting to see what happens and how it affects China and the countries that it deals with.

I recently read an article that talked about financial start-ups and how they fit into a world that is already dominated by the banking industry. There are an increasing number of start-ups who are aiming to take business away from banks by offering better services, or services that don't cost as much money as they do at big banks. To some degree, it is actually working. Many people who are savvy enough to shop around for different services are choosing these companies over big banks.

For now, this is just a thorn in the side of most banks, and not a real threat yet. But if banks don't start to become more competitive with their products and services, they could be facing a real threat very soon.

There has been a bit more talk about Governor Dalrymple's use of the retention bonus program since I last talked about it. Again, most people were surprised by his use of the bonuses, mostly because it hasn't really been utilized before, but also because of the amount of the bonuses given. Because of this use, many of the state legislature are talking about making changes to the program in 2017. One legislator has said that it is unlikely that the program will actually disappear, but the goal would be to reign in its usage.
Dalrymple has again defended his use of the bonuses, saying that each of the individuals who received them have been offered other jobs with very competitive salaries. Of course there is not really a way to know if that is true or not, but if so the use of the bonuses, and the high amount of them, make a little more sense and can be somewhat justified.

Today President Obama announced his rejection of Canada' s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. This pipeline project has been in the works for over seven years, and would connect existing oil pipelines from Alberta's oil fields down to refineries in Illinois and the Gulf Coast. On the way, it would bring some of North Dakota's oil with it, to a tune of over 800,000 barrels of oil per day.
Advocates of the project assert that it would create large infrastructure jobs, thus boosting the economy and workforce of many different states. In addition, it would further decrease our dependency on foreign oil by helping to lower domestic costs.
Those opposed to the project mainly cite large environmental concerns as their biggest problem with the pipeline. They claim that it would hasten the already deteriorating atmosphere, and harm the environment surrounding both the oil fields and along the pipeline.
I'm not too educated about the pipeline, but it seems that most politicians from North Dakota, democratic and republican, fully support the building of the pipeline to increase our economy, and in that sense I would have to agree with them.

This week I kinda want to talk a little bit about different current events that are going on both local and national, and just give me thoughts on it a little bit.
In particular today, I want to talk about something that happened in North Dakota that I read an article about. North Dakota has a program that allows the governor to allocate bonuses to state staff, which was implemented in 1999, but has only been used extremely sparingly. This year, Governor Dalrymple used this program pretty liberally, giving many members of his staff up to $30,000 in bonuses.
Defending his position, he stated that these staff are extremely valuable, and in order to stay competitive with the job market they need an incentive to stay.
I generally completely agree with the Governor's position, as in a lot of cases low to mid level government job's aren't as competitive in terms of wage compared to private sector jobs. If North Dakota wants to keep going in the right direction, you need people that are willing and able to do the job.

As I was explaining, there are three main things that need to be taken into consideration when choosing what market you will want to enter. Optimally, you will want to enter the market that you think the least amount of teams will enter, a market that you have cost advantages in, and you will want to set a price that will get you the largest market share.

Taking these three things into consideration, my team and I have chosen the market that we will enter, but have yet to decide on an exact price that we want to charge. We have good costs for this market, and generally this market isn't one that has a huge profit margin, so hopefully other teams won't be as likely to enter it. It's a really fun game that makes you think a lot, while applying concepts we have learned from different classes, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out over the next month.

So as I explained last time, each team has different costs for the four different markets, so each team will have their own unique advantages and disadvantages. So each time has to decide which market that they want to enter, and how much capacity, or capital, they want to purchase, which is used to produce the product. Each product in the market also has a marginal cost for each unit of the product that is produced.

There are eight different teams, and only four different markets, so its almost inevitable that more than one team will enter the same market. What happens in that case? This is where the real challenge of the game starts, because you have to try to predict 1) what market the other teams will enter 2) how much capacity they will purchase for that market and 3) what price they will charge for the product.

I will wrap up talking about this game next time!

I want to talk a little about a project that I am working on in one of my classes. For my econ class, Game Theory and Strategy, we have formed teams and are competing in a "Competitive Strategy Game." This game allows us to use skills that we have learned in this class, as long as what we have learned in previous economics classes, in a simulation type experience.

There are 4 different potential markets that each team can enter, each with different entry costs, unit capacity costs, and marginal costs. Each team has different costs for each of these markets, so no two teams have identical costs to enter and produce in a market. This means that it could be advantageous for one team to enter market 1, while another team has higher costs and doesn't really want to enter that market.

I will explain a little more about the game next time!

So at the end of the semester, we formed groups and did a bank analysis project. This consisted of picking 4-5 banks around the country and write a paper analysis, and then present our findings to the rest of the class. So the banks that we chose were Gate City Bank (naturally), Ramsey Bank, Bell State Bank & Trust, and First International Bank & Trust.

We did a bunch of research to find a large number of different ratios and percentages on all of the banks. We did 3-4 ratio/percentage for different "health" categories, such as Asset Quality, Capital Adequacy, Liquidity, and Earnings Quality. We then compared how the banks were doing to each other, and we also compared them to the national average to see how healthy overall they are doing. We then wrote a lengthy paper summarizing our findings, and created a presentation to give to the class. It was a pretty fun experience and really taught me a lot about banks.

Management of Financial Institutions, as a class, is essentially exactly what it sounds like it would be. The meat of what we learned had to deal with the differences between different kinds of financial institutions, namely banks, credit unions, insurance agencies, and finance companies. We learned how each one runs; how they make money, how they are managed, and how to tell if they are healthy as an institution.

In addition to that, we learned about the different regulatory bodies that regulate each type of institution. As I mentioned last time, the FDIC is the regulatory body that regulates banks. Others include the National Credit Union Association, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and individual state agencies that regulate insurance companies.

Next time I will talk about the big bank project that we did for this class!

So I was again going through CareerLink and looking at the available internships, and found another that I have a lot of interest in. It is a risk management internship with the FDIC. The FDIC, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is the governmental regulation branch of the banking industry around the country. It is there job to make sure that all banks that they insure are meeting at least the minimum standards for things such as deposit ratios and loan ratios.

Anyway, one of the classes that I took last year, Management of Financial Institutions, focused very heavily on the roll that the FDIC plays in the banking industry, and we learned many of the different "health" ratios and indicators that they use to determine whether or not a bank is in good condition. So after learning all of this, all the while working in a bank, the FDIC sounded like a pretty cool place to work. So finding this internship possibility made me extremely happy, and I think that I have a decent chance of getting it with my experience.

Since I am on the topic, next time I will talk a little more about my Management of Financial Institutions class that I took and what I learned.

So continuing with talking about some of the potential downsides of the TPP, another criticism is that tariffs that countries have exist to protect local industry from being over run by outside countries that are able to sell the same product for less. If taken away by the TPP, many local industries would no longer remain profitable and would have to shut down, leaving that country as a whole worse off in that regard.

One part of the TPP deal that has been leaked to the public is information the deal's intellectual property laws. These laws are generally much stricter than what most countries currently have in place, one of the influences of many corporations having their hand in the negotiations. These stricter laws give them the ability to potentially abuse or harass individuals that are "infringing" on their intellectual property rights. In addition, it is speculated that these laws will be applied to drugs to prevent cheaper medication from becoming readily available.

Lastly, the TPP gives companies the right to sue countries that have laws in place that affect them through the use of the tribunal that will be set in place. Doing this, companies can attempt to get rid of laws that, for example, restrict advertising tobacco products and cigarettes to young children.

All in all, the TPP is an extremely diverse agreement covering many topics, and really no one can say for sure if it will turn out good or bad. The deal has to be voted on and approved in each countries government before it actually takes effect.

Alright so what are some potential downsides to the TPP? Some of the initial concern regarding the agreement is the amount of secrecy that it was negotiated in. While a large majority of the population had no details regarding any of the agreement, many large corporations did have a hand in the negotiations. This is concerning because that means that a lot of the deal is negotiated is aimed at least somewhat towards providing those companies with some sort of benefit.

Another flaw that critics point to is that what the TPP proposes as "free trade" has essentially already happened because of the rapid globalization over the last few decades. Instead, some think that this is a ploy to enable large corporations to move jobs to lower wage earning countries and thus pay less for the same labor they would have to pay somewhere else. Additionally, it is believed that these same corporations would like to set those standards, the same ones I talked about last time, lower than what they currently are. This would allow them to spend less money having to follow rules and regulations.

There are still more downsides or negatives that I will continue talking about next time.

First I will talk about some of the potential gains that could be made by the participating nations of the TPP. As I had said before, a big thing that a deal like the TPP aims to do is to identify which tariffs that each country has that most affects market access and competition. Once these have been identified, a lot of negotiation between the countries happens to either get these tariffs reduced or removed altogether, thereby promoting a higher level of free trade and more products/services available to citizens.

 Another goal of the TPP is to create a rules standard for the participating countries that will affect much more than just tariffs and trade. These rules aim to standardize business practices and protect intellectual property rights, patents, and labor regulations, among other things. The hope is that with standardization across the board, labor and environmental laws of countries that have been lagging behind will catch up with the rest of the group. To ensure that the participating countries are following the rules and guidelines, the deal will set up a tribunal of sorts to enforce rules and pass down decisions.

Next time I will talk about some of the potential downsides of this deal.

This week I want to talk a little about the TPP, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If you haven't heard of it, its goal is similar to that of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The stated goal of the TPP is to help promote free trade between the participating countries by reducing tariffs and other trade restrictions and laws. The countries involved in the TPP are the US, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Unsurprisingly, there are people who think that this is a good thing, and there are people who think that this is a bad thing. This deal is one of the Obama Administration's biggest goals, and it has been in negotiations for over five years. They believe that if this deal does not get closed, that the US will lose a lot of its grasp in the Asia Pacific, and that China will be able to gain more influence. If that happened, American businesses would find it increasingly difficult to operate in the region, thereby harming our economy.

In the next couple of posts I will go into more detail as to what exactly some of the issues and benefits of the deal are.

The finance course that I am taking this semester is called Options, Futures, and other Derivatives. The goal of the class is to gain an understanding of how these types of derivatives work, how they hold value, and situations in which it is good or bad to hold these types of derivatives. So far we have learned the basics of both buying and selling options and futures. We have learned how they gain and lose value in relation to the price of the stock, and when it might be a good idea to purchase or sell these investment instruments to help hedge your portfolio against potential risk.

A lot of the stuff that we have covered over the first month or so of class was super basic, and for the most part was stuff that I already knew. Even still, it was nice to get a refresher, and over the last week or so we have started moving into more advanced stuff, which is nice. I am excited to learn more about the different possibilities with these types of investments over the semester, and potentially even utilize some of them with my own money.

Another of the classes that I'm taking this semester is Chinese language class. I am taking the class at Concordia through the Tri-College system, which is amazing because I was really sad that NDSU does not offer the class. Anyway, as I have mentioned earlier I've actually already taken a few years of Chinese in high school, so I was going in with at least a little bit of knowledge.

I knew right away that it was going to be an enjoyable class because I instantly started liking the teacher and his method of teaching. The first couple of weeks we were learning how to read the english alphabet version of the language so we would be able to put sounds to characters. A lot of that I remembered so it wasn't too difficult, and I was anxious to start getting into actual words and speaking the language.

The last few weeks of the class have definitely gotten a bit tougher with having to memorize all of the characters and the meanings, but it has been a lot of fun. It is really rewarding to be able to work hard learning things and see the efforts pay off. I really am looking forward to learning even more as the semester goes on, and even beyond that as well.

I want to talk a little bit about the classes that I am taking this semester and how they are going so far. Over the last year or so I have become extremely interested in learning different computer programming languages because technology is becoming increasingly relevant in so many fields. So I decided to take Computer Science 1, Introduction to programming, this semester. One of my good friends is majoring in Computer Engineering and has previously introduced me to some of the basic concepts. So going into this class the first few weeks was content that I already had a decent grasp on.

 We are now making it to content that is new to me, and it is extremely interesting while a little challenging at the same time. It really requires you to think a different way than you are generally use to, and having to memorize all of the different syntax can be challenging as well. Overall I'm very happy with my decision to take the class, and as of now do plan to take the next level of the class next semester.

So when we started our resume/portfolio assignment, I went on to CareerLink and started browsing the different internships that companies had posted on there. While I do have a good job, I think that having an internship in my field of interest would be extremely beneficial as well. After a few minutes of looking, I spotted a few that I would be extremely interested in. The first one is a Finance Co-Op with Bobcat company. This would be a great opportunity for me to get first-hand experience of what a career in corporate finance would be like. After researching the company a little bit, their values and mission really spoke to me, and I feel like it would make a great fit.

The second job posting that I saw was a summer internship with CoBank, which is a nationwide bank that mostly serves agricultural needs. This internship is for a credit analyst position, where I would get experience reviewing credit applications and writing summaries and reports to bring back to the managers.  This obviously would be a great move to further my career in the banking industry, and again the company sounds like a very solid one that I would enjoy working for.

I will probably end up actually applying for both, and see where the chips land.

So after about eight months of working in the call center, I was getting a little tired of it and wanted to find something different. I loved working at Gate City Bank though so I looked for job openings internally. There was a job opening in our Check Operations Department, which is part of the bigger Deposit Administrations department. The department as a whole does many different things, but as the name suggests all of the jobs are meant to support the Deposit part of the bank, which is all of the different accounts that customers can have, such as checking, savings, CDs, IRAs, etc.

Anyway, I applied for that job, had the interview, and switched over to that department at the beginning of January. Again, there was a lot of training for the job, but I was at least familiar with some of the programs that we used. In this new job, I have learned a lot more about how the front line tellers do their job and interact with them a lot more. I have also learned a lot more about some more complicated procedures of the bank involving electronic payments, stop payments, disputes, and things like that.

I am currently still working in this job and its become something that I really do enjoy. However, I am currently looking for other internships that I can do throughout my education, including the upcoming Spring and Summer. I'll talk a little bit about some of the jobs I am looking at next time.

This week I want to talk a little bit about my work experience at Gate City Bank.

I started working at Gate City in May of 2014, right at the end of my freshmen year of college. I was searching for jobs for the summer and potentially for the next school year, and given my major and my interests, I thought that a bank would be a perfect fit. I have lived in Fargo my whole life, and so I knew of Gate City and their good reputation throughout the community. I looked through their openings, and found one for the customer service center, aka the call center. The hours of the job fit nicely with my summer school schedule, and it seemed like something I would be good at, as well as a good entry level position into a bank for a college student.

So I ended up applying, and actually got a call back the very same day to set up an interview time. The interview went very well, and I started the job within the next two weeks and began my training. The job was actually a lot more complicated that I expected, as their was a lot of different information to learn, and every customer had the potential to ask you something that you didn't know. Overall though, it was a great job experience and I learned a lot about the bank and the industry as a whole.

I ended up moving to a different position within Gate City and the beginning of this year, and will talk about that next time.

After we got back from our trip, we were required to write a paper about the trip. The first half was to summarize and explain what we learned from each of the different business trips, and the second half was to be our own research on a topic that was related to business and/or culture in China.

I chose to do my research on something that really impacted me while I was there. You may or may not know that China's government censors a lot of different internet websites and phone applications. I knew this going in, but was pretty surprised as to the extent of the censorship. I was not able to access any google app on my phone, including the app store to download new apps. I couldn't access any American social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Without those things my phone was essentially useless. So I decided to write about how this affects both businesses and the day to day lives of the people living in China.

There are currently a couple widely accepted ideas of why the government censors as many things as it does. The first is to help Chinese companies grow and profit while limiting the growth of foreign companies into the Chinese market. The second is a little more subtle -  to monitor and select what exactly they want the public to know about. They are able to screen papers and stories that are put on the internet and printed in the newspapers, giving them a ton of control on what information the public has. The rise of social media has made this increasingly difficult, and the Chinese people have been demanding more and more information than they ever have before, putting the government in a very difficult position.

Overall I learned a lot about the business and culture in China, and had a lot of fun while doing it. 

So I'll talk a little more about my trip to China, what we did, and how I felt about it.

It started with a 15 hour flight, which were some of the longest hours of my life. After we finally landed and got outside of the airport, I realized I was in for a tough week. The five days that we were in Shanghai was one of the hottest weeks in its history, with a real feel temperature of over 110 degrees Fahrenheit most days. That was definitely one of the biggest changes that I had to adjust too.

Since the trip was being led as a business credit, we visited five companies that gave us presentations and did a Q&A. The companies were hdt Media, a solely Chinese based company, Abercrombie & Fitch, Emerson, SJE Rhombus, and Black & Veatch. The latter four were all American companies doing business in China and other parts of Asia. During the presentations they talked about how doing business differs from America, some of the advantages and disadvantages, and really cleared up a lot of misconceptions that many people have. For instance, I was under the impression that the Chinese government controlled and limited what a lot of companies could really do, but I found out that that was not really the case. The presenter of our hdt Media visit explained that as long as the company is doing business fairly and not trying to assert itself politically, the government really will not interfere in normal circumstances.

In addition to the presentations, some of the businesses had factories that we were able to tour. It might just be because these factories were in big cities and not out in the rural part of China, but from what I saw they were extremely organized, safe, and the workers seemed to be happy to be making money.

Overall it was an amazing visit and a great experience. Next I'll talk about some things we had to do for the class post-trip and a summary of my research paper.

So as I said, the next few posts I want to talk a little about my trip to China this summer, how it went, what I learned, my interest in the business culture, things like that.

For some reason that I can't really pinpoint, I've always been fascinated with the culture of the Asian countries, in particular with China. The year that I started high school, my school started to offer Chinese language class. I jumped on the opportunity and ended up taking that for four years. I learned more in that class about the culture than I did the actual language, and I knew from taking that class that one day I wanted to visit China.

When I got to college, I was extremely disappointed to learn that they didn't offer a Chinese class. I ended up not taking any language class, but still kept my interest and passion in the Chinese culture. So last year when a presenter came in to one of my business classes and talked about study abroad opportunities, I knew instantly that I wanted to do one in China. So that is exactly what I did. This summer, from August 3-16, I was in China on a faculty led study abroad trip. While we were there we did many things, among them visits of different businesses in China and seeing many cultural and historical sites. It was some of the best weeks of my life, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. 

So since that first experience with my grandma, over the next few years I started to save my own money and begin to invest it by myself. Honestly, it did not go that well. Because I was making so little, I didn't have a ton to invest. And because of this, the commission taken by the brokers for each trade I would make was a huge percentage of what I had. As a result, as time passed I ended up not really making any money and not really losing any money either. Eventually I just decided to get out of the market because I wasn't able to do much. Instead I just continually saved my money until I had enough to actually make some ground.

Fast forward a few years, to just a couple years ago actually, and I finally had what I thought would be enough to actually make some passive money. I did some research and decided to put some money into a mutual fund so that I didn't have to pay much attention to it. That was a few years ago now, and my money is still there. I have made a bit of money, but as I talked about before, the recent down turn has hurt me as well. I continue to pay attention to how the market is doing on a weekly basis, but I'm not overly concerned because the money I have invested is money that I don't need to rely on in the near future.

So next week I will go off this topic a bit and talk a bit about my recent visit to China and what I learned while I was there.

As I have said before, it was my grandmother who initially took me "under her wing" so to speak. She explained how the stock market worked in terms that I could understand at the time. She explained what exactly stocks were, how to buy and sell them, why to buy and sell them, the risks and rewards of buying/selling stocks, among many other things. After learning all of this stuff about it, I was really excited to get my feet wet.

My grandmother was very gracious and gave me some money to start, but on the condition that she had to help me choose my first investment. So we did a little bit of research together, and we bought about a thousand dollars worth of stocks. Over the next couple of days I tracked them religiously, checking the price every thirty minutes or so. Every time the price would go down I would get really scared that I would lose all of the money. And every time it went up I got really excited being able to see myself gain money from doing essentially nothing.

After a couple of weeks I got back together with my grandmother and we talked about a bit what happened, how I felt about it, and what I had learned from the experience. After that, to my sadness she sold the stocks and took her money back, leaving me with nothing. It was a great first experience however, and would give me good knowledge to lean back on in the future.

Hey everyone.

So if you have been following the stock market, or even just the daily news, you have undoubtedly heard some talk about whats been happening the last few weeks. After a few years of a steady increase in the value of the stock market, their has been a significant dip for the first time since 2008. One of the first days we saw a big dip was a few weeks ago when China decided to devalue its own currency. The US stock market reacted immediately, dropping a few percent in one day. The reason this is generally not good news is because it really hurts US companies, or any company from any other country other than China. US companies that make money in China must convert that money back into US dollars, and when the value of Chinese currency goes down it takes more of it to make 1 US dollar, lowering revenue and profits.

Because of that, the stock of US companies is devalued, and people start selling. Well it happened so fast that even after the stocks may have lost value equal to the lost profits, the momentum of people selling along with the amount of attention it was getting just kept it going down. This had some people extremely scared, while others had predicted a correction coming for awhile now. Since the initial drop, the market has been fluctuating quite a bit and has yet to settle back down. For those who have a lot of money in the market, this is a very stressful time indeed.

Later this week I will talk a bit more about the stock market and some of my first experiences with it!

Alright so to kind of wrap up the last couple of posts, I just want to talk a bit about my experience in the Economics and Finance classes here at NDSU. Starting with my very first semester of college, I have taken an economics class every single semester. This has kept my motivation going, while also allowing me to focus on other classes as well without spending all of my time thinking about economics. My experience in these classes has overall been a pretty positive one. I have learned quite a bit, developed good relationships with the teachers, and grown my interest in the area. This semester I am taking a course I have been waiting two years to take - Game Theory and Strategy. The basics of the class revolve around how people, or, more likely, businesses, strategically act and react to what other businesses do in their respective markets. Later on in the semester I will talk more about it.

After a semester or so I realized that since I came into college with a bunch of credits from AP classes, I had enough time in my four years to pick up another major. The logical choice based on my interests was, of course, finance. In order to do so, I had to take a few extra courses in order to be accepted into the college of business, but it was well worth it. For the last few semesters, I have taken  a couple business/finance courses each, and they have been very enjoyable. The finance courses have taught me how to better evaluate company's financials, how to evaluate stocks and bonds, among many other things. The finance and business courses required are extremely diverse, so I am very excited to continue taking these classes as well.

Overall I have been extremely lucky to receive such a good education only two years into my four year degree. All of my teachers have been very good and been willing to help out students to the best of their ability.

Next week I will talk about some more current events in the stock market and my thoughts about that!

Alright so, I've learned a bit of information about the stock market and the economy by now, and that has only made me more curious. So by the time that I got to high school I was really ready to take any class that would be able to teach me more about these things. Unfortunately for me, at my school the Economics and Government classes generally weren't taken until your senior year. I didn't let this discourage me though; I still paid close attention to current events, the economy, and the stock market, and how those things affected each other.

Finally. Finally it was my last year of high school, and I was able to take both Economics and Government classes. I realize that these classes don't sound very fun, and were often dreaded by students who had no interest in such things. For me though, I was beyond excited. And truly, they did not disappoint in the slightest. I ended up having the same teacher for both classes, and he was one of the best teachers I have ever had. Even with my eagerness for the classes and excitement to learn, somehow he was able to make me even more eager and more excited. The way that he taught fit perfectly with how I learn. The mixture of lecture, class interaction, group work, and homework was perfect. On top of that, I was able to establish a good personal relationship with him, which made the classes even more enjoyable.

What I learned from that Economics obviously influenced me enough to continue the course of study in college and hopefully throughout my professional career. All in all, these topics are something that I thoroughly enjoy, and I consider myself lucky to have found something so early in my life that I can pursue.

Hello again, today I am going to talk a little bit about how I became interested in finance and economics!

Ever since I can remember, when I would come home form school my parents would be sitting in the living room watching the news. Or I would go to their office during the day and they would have the news on there, or some sort of show that covers the stock market. So whenever I came home or went there I would end up sitting their learning about current events, what the economy is doing, or anything to do with politics. I would ask all sorts of questions but often times didn't really understand what was going on. Ultimately, it was just some way for me to spend my time that I was also pretty curious about.

Later on, in my middle school and high school years, I was a little more aggressive in my questions and wanted to learn more about it. My grandma was actually the one that usually took the time to explain most things to me, or at least tried to. She has been following the economy, stock market, and politics for years and years, so I think that she was glad to see that I was also interested. She explained how the stock market works, what exactly stocks were, and all that good stuff. I became even more interested and started following it on my own time.

That's the background of how I became so interested in the stock market and the economy, and next time I'll continue that with some stories about how some high school classes kept my interest alive.

Hello everyone! 

My name is Charlie, I am a 20 year old college junior currently attending North Dakota State University. I am originally from Fargo, North Dakota, so I didn't have to travel far to find the college that fit my needs perfectly. I am double majoring in Finance and Economics - I have a great interest in anything that has to do with both the finance world and the global and national economy. This interest has almost always been present for me because my family can very often be found talking about the stock market, how the economy is doing, or anything related to those things. So naturally it piqued my interest. But what really got me motivated to study it further in college was the first economics course I took in high school, which I'll talk about in a later blog. In addition to school, I have also been working at Gate City Bank for about a year and a half now, which is a great experience and gives me knowledge that I will most likely use in my future career. 

So that is what I am currently doing with my life, but outside of school and work there are many other things that I enjoy doing. For instance, I have been playing video games for as long as I can remember. Ever since I was old enough to understand how a computer works, you could almost always find me at one during my free time. Not only video games though, I absolutely love board games and often hound my family to play with me. Monopoly, trivial pursuit, settlers of catan - I love them all. While growing up I also played many sports: baseball, football, basketball, and tennis were the main ones. Once I got older I eventually stopped playing, but they were all great experiences while growing up. The other activity that I often did while growing up was reading books. Once I was introduced to fantasy/sci-fi books, I just couldn't put them down. Still to this day, mostly during the summer, I read books for many hours a week just for fun. Overall I think that the activities that I participated in and hobbies I found while growing up have made me into a well-rounded individual that feels comfortable doing a lot of different things. 

Next week I will talk a little bit more about how I became interested in the finance and economics world and what I hope to gain through my education with it.