The last 10+ years haven’t been spent sitting on my hands. I’ve seen how people can easily become complacent first-hand resulting in productivity issues, and then those same people get defensive when they find themselves at the chopping block. No, I’m not guilty. As a consultant, you’re practically always on the go and never work on the same project for long periods of time. Others who become complacent, stop learning. Life happens and people get busy, understood. Some get lazy too. Honestly, I’m guilty. I’m far from perfect. Could I have used my free time better? Yes, definitely. But, I can’t say that I didn’t pick-up a skill or two along the way.
Dubbed the “2020 Congressional Insider Trading Scandal”, a few Senators are currently being investigated for insider trading. They made material stock transactions sometime after a confidential Senate meeting on COVID-19 in late-January 2020. Senators Loeffler, Perdue and Burr may or may not have violated the STOCK Act. And had I been a Senator, my name would have been included on that list as well. I sold all of my stock positions in mid-February 2020 and took a $150,000 loss, losing 90% of my gain year-to-date. Anyone who was following the “world” news could have surmised that COVID-19 would soon affect the US as it was doing in China and other parts of the world. You didn’t need a special meeting to see the writing on the wall. In hindsight, my all or nothing stock sale was a bad decision, financially – I would have been golden now; however, it saved me from significant amounts of stress.
I’ve learned how to day trade over the last three years. Realizing that I had found some success in my nominal Amazon investment that my ex-wife had been against, I had an epiphany that I could use price movements to my advantage. Using the simple stock trading interface on my broker’s website and then upgrading to its stock trading desktop application, I was able to execute over 100 round-trip trades, none at a loss. Up $45,000 after just two months, I was feeling confident. Then the next couple months were a rollercoaster and after taking two $20,000 losses, the second after gaining back $20,000, I was on tilt and stopped day trading by that July.
Older and wiser, a bit, I started trading again a year later with the confidence that I had learned from my mistakes. Similarly, I had success in the first couple months and was up $40,000+ with a near perfect transaction record. Then, thinking I could trade while on my first day after arriving in Las Vegas and not knowing what was happening in the markets for the last two days, I made a bad trade and eventually took a $20,000 loss, again. I was able to recover most of my loss, but not before losing another $20,000. I was on tilt again and stopped day trading for the second time.
Three months later, December 2019, I shook off the loss, regained composure and started trading yet again but cautiously. By February, I was up $150,000 – to some that’s little, to others it’s a lot. Maybe I was a beneficiary of the historically strong market, but that soon came to an end when I made the decision to sell everything due to COVID-19. Unlike before, I wasn’t on tilt and I’ve been trading every day since. I’m not a great trader, by far. But, I believe that I’m able to synthesize information better than any time before and my skills are strong enough to beat the market. Still in its infancy, whether I can succeed is to be determined.
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