I’m not much for long-winded intros so I’ll get right to the point. I’m making this site to log my experience building a (hopefully wildly successful) stock trading portfolio. But that’s not where this site actually started.
It started many years ago while I was a car salesman. I wanted to find ways to generate an income that didn’t rely on me working endless hours at a retail store away from my family, with sometimes crazy ups and downs in commission. So, I started looking online for ways to generate an income on the side that would eventually blossom into something full-time. I tried marketing internet info-products, MLM, and affiliate sites but…
…it never happened.
At one point I even started my own used car lot and service center with a couple other investors. I did real estate investing (flipping and renting) which I still have holdings in. But my problem was, balancing the need to make a living now, to support my family, I couldn’t find the time to successfully invest in these other ventures. That’s not to say I was completely unsuccessful. In fact, I had just enough success to know that I could be successful on my own. But not enough savings to sustain myself during the period I would need to get something started. I wasn’t willing to take the risk with a stay-at-home wife and two (eventually three) kids.
See, I didn’t grow up with money. I grew up in a small mill village community after my family had declared bankruptcy from a failed business venture when I was four. So having the family backing or start-up capital, even a small amount, wasn’t an option.
I didn’t finish college, even though I lived in Germany as an exchange student for a year and traveled Europe; I never figured out what I wanted to do with my career when I started selling cars.
I did have some inspiration into the financial markets, however. A few years ago I stumbled upon a blog called Mr. Money Mustache. While I think the guy is a general douche, his story was inspiring. He saved up enough money living frugally for about a decade, enough that the money he saved could go to work for him in investments so that he didn’t need to work for anyone else anymore. I began to dig and learn about investments. My 401k was obviously not giving me the returns it would take to ever get there, on top of the fact I wasn’t saving enough. But still, I was inspired.ex
The problem with Mister Money is he started with a great base, in which he and his wife had huge tech salaries and no kids which enabled them to stash away a giant chunk of change, enough to live off the interest.
…that wasn’t possible for me.
I was making decent money but not enough, with a family, to stash away hordes of money.t
But still more inspiration came. I read Tony Robbins’ Money Master the Game and learned more about the power of using money to make money. It got me really interested in investing, but then something else happened.
All of these ways of making money by investing have one thing in common: they’re very slow. Some would say, that makes them safe! But we all know that’s bull** because we remember 2008. In 2008, people’s investment portfolios were wiped such that they lost 12-13 years worth of gain (see this devastating chart). Then, I found something way riskier but it seemed to pay off way more. I re-discovered Timothy Sykes who specializes in penny stocks, something super risky but has a 20-100% upside in as fast as a morning.
…so I jumped in.
And I made some quick money investing in $AMD as soon as news was brought out in summer 2017 that they would start making chips for Apple. Any news about a supplier making parts for Apple will send it’s stock up. It was easy, and I was hooked. But it was really too easy, and I quickly discovered that it wouldn’t always be like that. That $AMD was actually a safe bet, and the more rewarding but way riskier stocks would send me through an ocean of ups and downs. Good thing I didn’t put in a lot since I knew I was new and learning! (You can see a log of all my trades here). I lost a lot of money in subsequent trades that made me take a break since I didn’t feel like I was ever going to understand it.
I won’t even get into crypto-currencies…
But fast-forward to February 2018, today, when I’ve spent a lot of time learning and I’ve gotten over or at least better recognized a lot of my initial fears and other mental blocks from performing at the level I’ve needed to. I’ve become more technical, though I’m not there yet I thought it would be interesting to blog my journey and put it out there for the world. I don’t think I’ll be the next Tim Sykes or anything, but I also think a lot of people want a more real-world starting from the bottom log of what it really and truly takes to become financially free trading stocks in the stock market, without any of the hype and all of the losses.
Completely transparent real-world trading, from a normal dude starting with about $1,000.
What you WON’T find on my blog
- expensive cars
- fake trades
- paper trades included in my profits
- paid memberships
What you WILL find on my blog
- real trades every week
- actual profit and loss
- all the grit, the strategy
- the tools and resources I actually use
My hope is you can use my story as an inspiration to start trading yourself, and to make yourself financially free by trading stocks. If my blog is an inspiration, please leave a comment below.
Much love!
