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The Flappy Bird Economy | Financial Bites

 

Ted Jenkin, CFP®, AAMS®, AWMA®, CRPC®, CMFC®, CRPS®

Co-CEO and Founder oXYGen Financial, Inc.

Request a FREE consultation: www.oxygenfinancial.net

 

If you have kids or teenagers in your family, then it’s likely you have seen the highly downloaded app called Flappy Bird. Sometimes the simpler the game is, the better off it does because anybody can play the game. Consider apps like Tetris or Candy Crush or Angry Birds which absolutely killed it with downloads. The goal of the game is really simple. Just touch the screen to flap your bird up or down guiding the bird between various heights of piping that have a narrow entryway for your bird to fly through. The game is incredibly addicting!

Dong Nguyen mysteriously put this post up on Twitter on February 8th @ 2:02 P.M. “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.” There was massive speculation around why he took down Flappy Birds as it was reported he was making $50,000 a day. Some say that the pipes had the same likeness as Mario Brothers, and there were already copy cats being built such as Flappy Bee.

When people die, products get discontinued, or collectibles such as wine or art have limited production, the law of supply and demand instantaneously kick into action. For those that enjoy making money, it’s up to you whether this law will end up having a short term shelf life or a long term shelf life. The real winners when it comes to making money can determine the right time is to take your profit off the table.

Currently, there are offers on websites such as eBay to buy a fully loaded Flappy Bird phone for as much as $16,000. I have seen several actually sell already for the $1,500 to $2,000 range online. If you bought your phone in the $200 to $300 range, you could make 5x to 10x your money by unloading your mobile phone now while the Flappy Bird Economy is scorching hot. If you hold on to the phone for too long, it’s entirely possible that the value of the phone will be worth exactly what it is today which is the value of what you have stored in the phone.

We’ve seen these types of short term phenomenon before over the past several years. Remember when we all thought that we’d never see a Twinkie made again? To be a savvy investor in any economy, you can’t get emotional about what you own irrespective of whether it’s collectible wine, art, or automobiles. Hindsight is always 20/20, so when the prices of what you can sell are high that should be your red alert signal to unload. If you don’t, you could just fly right into a pipe and crash!

 

 

oXYGen Financial, Inc. co-CEO Ted Jenkin is one of the foremost knowledgeable professionals in giving financial advice to the X and Y Generation.

TED JENKIN IS SECURITIES LICENSED THROUGH INVESTACORP, INC. A REGISTERED BROKER/DEALER MEMBER FINRA, SIPC. ADVISORY SERVICES OFFERED THROUGH INVESTACORP ADVISORY SERVICES, INC. A SEC REGISTERED INVESTMENT ADVISORY FIRM. Linked sites are strictly provided as a courtesy. Investacorp, Inc., and its affiliates, do not guarantee, approve nor endorse the information or products available at these sites nor do links indicate any association with or endorsement of the linked sites by Investacorp, Inc. and its affiliates.

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