STR 090: Saving Up $1,000 and then Some Major Luck

Published: Dec. 5, 2016, 5 p.m.

When it comes to just flat out being lucky, in the history of the podcast, I think we have a new winner! To give credit where credit is due, our community member, Josh, worked hard and saved up $1,000. So it is not a situation where he just lucked out in regards to having money, but yeah… I don’t want to run anything, just listen – haha. After the initial luckiness, Josh quickly discovered that there is much more to trading than what he had originally thought. While he joins a long list of many who have thought this same way, the way Josh conducted himself after this realization is something we can all learn from, myself included.

Notes:

  • Josh’s introduction to the market was a virtual game and after he learned the mechanics of it was able to pad his virtual account. This led him to want to do it with actual money.
  • After saving up $1,000, he asked his dad for some tickers on his watch list but his dad is a notoriously bad typist and ended up giving him a recommendation on something he didn’t intend. Lucky for Josh, after holding for 8 months that ticker was bought out for triple what he paid.
  • Josh and his friend had been following the marijuana legislation in 2013 and decided to spread their money into a few different names. They had actually caught the start of the ‘pot stock boom’ and instead of holding and hoping, Josh ended up taking profits to be safe and not get caught in the dump.
  • After finding little success in the penny stock market, he shifted his money back into larger names that he didn’t mind holding longer term. He was busy with school and life so he prefered to not sweat the small moves that stocks tend to make intraday. After watching some of Clay’s videos he decided to change brokerages and find a good platform for day trading.
  • While Josh didn’t have a risk management plan on paper, he was extremely protective of his money and refused to let any future trades go against him by a large margin. He falls into a small percent of people who DO NOT go big and ultimately go home.
  • Josh is now keeping himself accountable by paper trading with an Excel spreadsheet. He also realizes that less is more when it comes to indicators. Price action and volume are king.

Quotes:

  • “I figured out I was good at reading the programming of the game, make a bunch of money and get really ahead.”
  • “We saw that legislation was coming out for marijuana. My friend and I did some research and spread our money into some penny stocks.”
  • “I started looking into .0001 stocks. I’ve been trying to sell some of these since 2014 but liquidity trap for sure.”
  • “I thought, oooh all IPO’s go up right? I’m going to get in and get out but I couldn’t get out quick enough.”
  • “I stopped putting money on the line to figure out why I was unable to predict the market right.”
  • “I used to have bollinger bands and histograms but didn’t know what any of them meant. I thought I was cool like the Youtube videos.”

Links: