Embarkation

Memorial Day, Monday, May 25, 2020

This is the beginning of my blog exploring the world of trading. I have two purposes for this blog. First and foremost, I want a record as it happens. Once I have achieved reoccurring success in trading, I’ll already have a record that I could share with people. The second purpose is to make this public from the start. The latter reason is tied to the first in that when I share, people will know I’m not just making up a story to sell them a book. But I wouldn’t sell it anyway. If I am successful in trading, why would I need to sell a book about it? I plan on providing this information free once I get there.

I admit I really know very little about trading. The financial decisions I made in my life have not always been good ones. And it isn’t due to a lack of education. I have studied and used accounting in business. I’ve also studied four years of mathematics in college. And I’ve received budgeting training and have used many budgeting tools. But never have I delved before into the financial jungle of trading.

At the time of writing this (on Memorial Day) in memory of my brothers and sisters in arms whose final service was contributing the ultimate sacrifice: their lives, I wanted to be able to do more for their families and their memory. But I just don’t have the cash. In fact, because of a series of foresight-lacking decisions, I’m even more strapped for cash right now than I should be. This is what motivated me to get more serious about trading.

Last year I thought I made a good decision to buy land in a southern state where my wife’s family lives, using cashed out retirement funds, for an eventual retirement home. I also purchased a condo on a lake near where I worked (which was 97 miles from my house). But this COVID-19 pandemic and life taught me otherwise. However, the lockdown wasn’t enough teaching that life (or God) had in store for me.

Right in the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown, a fire broke out in the building my condo is in, damaging my condo and putting selling the condo on hold. Normally, those condos would sell pretty quickly during the summer. In fact, they are usually under contract a day or two after listing. Now I have to wait for all the restoration work to finish. This all happened during the same timeframe I decided to move my family south where ice in parking lots (like the one my wife slipped on and got a TBI from in February of this year) are rare. My job interview was on March 11^th, and the new job started on May 4^th. It has been a perfect storm of bad timing and thus bad decisions.

My house where my family lives, and I live on the weekend, has several open remodeling projects when all this happened – including having to pave the ripped up and widened driveway. The plan was to finish them over the next few years – then move south. But my wife slipping on the ice just two weeks after spinning out and totaling her truck on the highway moved these plans up. Unless I finish these projects, I’ll take a huge hit on the house when I sell it – an estimated $50K. If I could sell my condo right now, I could use that equity to pay someone else to do it quickly. But I cannot do that now because of the fire. And I’m now in that southern state working my new fulltime job and unable to finish the house myself.

Why do I share this with you? Because I hope to reach people and let them get to know a real person who is struggling – and who is beginning to delve into trading as a way to replenish funds from poorly timed decisions. I’m nothing special and I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had a meager start. I left high school to join the Air Force with no money to my name. I did Air Force active duty for nearly 9 years and sometime during my enlistment I found myself in bankruptcy. I did get some college done while active duty and learned a skill that did well to take care of my family ever since. I did spend a lot of money (go into debt) for education that if I hadn’t, and if I would have used wisely all the money I made, I’d probably be a multimillionaire today.

Okay, so back to today, Memorial Day 2020. In thinking about being able to help military families out I decided to get serious and finish my novel. I’m not a particularly good writer, but I do have a good imagination (not sure if anyone would agree). As I was surfing the web looking for answers to questions, and as surfing often goes, I saw some clickbait that interested me. It was about trading penny stocks. Well, after spending more time than I wanted, to watch some investor sharing his pitch that was really an ad to convince you to buy his book, I decided I need to learn for myself.

I should share that I did start several months ago investing with the hope to earn more than I invested. My first move was to just try it out with only a few hundred dollars. In a few purchases over the last year totaling $609.82 to be exact. Yup, that’s it. Pretty pathetic, right? I’d rather spend that on a new Macbook Pro (mine is 8 years old).

The investments were Bitcoin, Alaskan Airlines, Delta Airlines, Proctor and Gamble, and Newmont. Why did I pick those? Newmont and Proctor and Gamble were supposed to be good picks, and I figured eventually all the airlines would be back in full swing. I first bought $100 worth of Bitcoin, not knowing at the time the price was the highest it has been since. Next, I bought another $100 worth of Bitcoin when it was under $4K during the outbreak. At the time of writing this the total value of my Bitcoin investment is $270.72 so a 35% return (in hindsight I wished I would have bought an entire bitcoin). Finally, my son invited me to the Robinhood app, where I purchased $409.82 worth of stock. Okay, sure in total I earned 11% over less than a year (see spreadsheet below). Not bad, but certainly not the $1,000 before breakfast the investor selling his book said would happen.

Stock	Shares	Purchase Price	Total	Current Price	Total	Total Return
NEM	3	$64.18	$192.54	$62.80	$188.40	-$4.14
PG	1	$115.40	$115.40	$112.60	$112.60	-$2.80
DAL	2	$22.16	$44.32	$22.55	$45.10	$0.78
ALK	2	$28.78	$57.56	$31.00	$62.00	$4.44
			$409.82			-$1.72
	Spent	Current Value	Total Return
Bitcoin	$200.00	$270.72	$70.72
		Total return:	$69.00
		Total investment:	$609.82
		Percent return:	11.31%

What started this was after rejecting buying the investor’s book, I found and read the following website. https://www.thebalance.com/penny-stocks-trading-guide-for-beginners-4123635. It was in reading this that prompted me to see trading as a journey that required overcoming a learning curve and surviving trial and error. And once I’m successful at it, I will share it all free.

The first thing to always remember – I mean this has to be something you keep telling yourself until you believe it – and then continue telling yourself evermore. That thing is the truth about human beings and therefore the truth about me and you and everyone (unless you happen to be an extraterrestrial lifeform).

That truth is we seem to have something within us that drives us to not veer too far from the path we have already taken (whether that path was good or bad). Sometimes that drive tells us we cannot become what we’d like to become whether that’s athletic, a good parent, college-educated, a novelist, independently wealthy – or anything else we would love to become. It’s like there’s something within us that is so comfortable where we’re at that we’re even scared to become. We could find ourselves experiencing some anxiety once we get a glimpse that it might actually be possible for us. It would seem so much easier to not believe we can become than to fight against that inner drive. We might even find ourselves unknowingly sabotaging our progress – sabotaging our dreams.

But the truth is we can fight against that and win – every one of us! We do not have to let that define us. If I was already over that I would have already shared my plight and victory with you. But the truth is though I’ve made great progress, I have much more to go. After all, I am stuck on finishing my novel at page 374 – I think because of this. I am blaming writer’s block, but I think there is still some of that self-defeating thinking that’s afoot I may not even be aware of. But I assure you, I will conquer, and you will see it happen. That’s not to say I’m confident my book will be successful. It could flop, but the real goal for me is to finish it and (self) publish it. I can then do better next time, learn from the reviews.

So without further ado, as they say, here’s the start of my trading journey, and I’ll probably share other things that happen along the way so you know the full context surrounding my trading journey. My family’s lives changed forever when we lost our oldest son to suicide fourteen months ago. Now I’m working on changing my family’s lives forever in a positive way. I'm also not only want to share my success trading, but also my success overall. And if I can help you and others improve your lives in the process, such will be the true reward.

They say fortune favors the bold. What the cliché fails to say is being bold isn’t in taking a risk. It’s surviving the failures that are destined to occur before success happens. The good news is once success happens, doing it again is a much easier journey.