Just "Blink"

Let me start at the beginning.

As a recent college graduate who just began his career, I’ve heard from plenty of people that I should start saving and investing money while I’m young and that the sooner you start saving, the sooner you’ll be able to retire. Since starting my job I try to save at least $200 per month in my savings account though the money in there will be going toward a new (used) car in the spring.

Rewind to 3 or 4 months ago. As a loyal Chipotle-goer, I wondered to myself whether the company would end up splitting from McDonald’s and ever offer stock. I did a little searching and found some speculation online and talked to my investing-crazy friend who at 23 seems to follow the stock market like many of us follow our sports teams at that age. He mentioned to me that he had heard some talk about it, but nothing for sure.

My whole interest in Chipotle stock is based off of a few simple, but somewhat marketing and business-savvy observations. I saw a company who had a great product offering, taking a ton of business away from traditional fast-food outlets with its “gourmet food, fast” position. I also saw a well-developed brand, great store design and experience, and excellent customer service and promotions including “free burrito” giveaways on holidays and “buy one now, bring back the receipt for a free one on X date.” Most importantly – and the result of the previous three factors – is a cult-like following that sees people standing in 15-minute lines on their lunch break just to get a craved burrito.

Now I have zero stock market experience whatsoever. While I’m no student of finance, I’m smart enough to understand the core variables like capital, assets, and debt on a balance sheet. But a few things that I would hold at an equally high level of importance as balance sheet and growth plan are a company’s dedication to innovation and customer service and their brand power – the presence of or ability to produce a brand loyalists and zealots. With Chipotle having many of these things, I saw them as a great investment opportunity.

This week my investment-crazy friend was texting me news of Chipotle announcing the release of an Initial Public Offering later in the week. We started discussing it on the phone and through e-mail. It was speculated that the IPO would be $18-20 per share. I started pondering the thought of actually buying some stock, but since I was also saving for a car I figured I could throw down $300 on shares at most. I didn’t have an online brokerage account (and wasn’t going to open one anytime soon with many services requiring a minimum of $1000 to start), so my friend was going to buy the shares on his E-TRADE account for me.

Well, today was the actual IPO. Last night I didn’t talk to my friend about when the market opened in the morning and whether to get on and buy it for me. He was hanging out with his girlfriend and I was with mine and we put the subject off until the next morning. I came to work this morning, did some research on the IPO and because of a few sentences of concern over the capital required for their growth strategy – amidst much of the talk of high buzz and other potential – I couldn’t decide whether I should buy for sure or not. I hadn’t heard anything from my friend either. So what happened? The market opened and I got a text message an hour later from the friend telling me that the stock had leapt to $42 per share, double the initial offering, within an hour.

Point of the story: I didn’t make a quick, decisive action. I didn’t Blink.

(It would’ve helped to hear from my friend BEFORE the market opened too).