I have always been curious about stocks since my high school money management class. I remember making a presentation about Conoco Phillips and how their company was better than others. I was so confident they would succeed because it is evident that everyone needs oil. I rocked the presentation but the stock at that time was a flop and I lost the "money" my teacher originally gave to us.

Since then I have watched and paid attention to certain stocks that I believe will make a significant profit in the near future. One stock that I have been watching in recent months is Tesla Co. I was confident that the stock that had shot up in the middle of 2016 was only rising. Tesla is involved in the making of an electric car that can accelerate from 0-60 MPH in less than four seconds. They have also begun working on transportation and trips to Mars. With these futuristic innovations, I thought their company was only growing and flourishing.

I had thought this until I read the article published last week in Bloomberg called Big Short's Eisman Is Shorting Tesla for 'Execution Problems.' The article is about Steve Eisman, a money manager, who predicted the collapse of subprime mortgages before the collapse in 2008. He is currently shorting against Tesla Co. and Zillow Group Inc. His prediction is that Elon Musk cannot compete with the leaders of 'autonomous driving' like General Motors or Google. The article goes on to explain that Tesla has spent over a billion dollars in the last few quarters. He predominantly thought if Tesla began to make a profit, he would be very surprised.

This taught me an important lesson about investing which is to always do your research and then some. I have been researching different stocks and information, keeping my options open for what I want my first investment to be. I am interested in taking a stock class at my university to indulge in how the stock market will look in the coming future. One class that has scraped the service of the stock market and the economy is the economics class URI required me to take as a freshman. I am hoping during my second semester I will have the option to delve more into the topic.

The first lesson about stocks is that there are short term and long term investments capital gains. A short-term stock can include trading or shorter time span of buying and selling your stock, whereas a long-term stock is an investment over a longer period of time. Of course, that time varies from six months to 40 years. The advice I have taken from people I know about stocks is to be patient. If you don't have patience then you shouldn't invest in long-term stocks.

All in all, you have many options for investing: long-term, short term, penny stocks, blue chip stocks, and more. I hope that this sparks interest and helps you to learn more about stocks.