The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Throw Down the Gauntlet => Topic started by: Roland of Gilead on June 24, 2018, 09:08:28 PM
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I just opened a new account with RobinHood this evening using a link from MMM member Epor (random pick but she seems nice).
I am funding it with $2500 and probably will do a lot of biotech and options trading, maybe even biotech options!
This is straight up casino gambling but I have been doing this in Etrade since 2001 and have managed to raise a $1700 IRA account to $93,000 over the 17 years. This is with paying $9.95 stock trades and $1 per contract plus $9.95 option trades AND having to wait three days for trades to settle. I think I can do a bit better and faster with the larger stake and margin account (not for margin itself but for instant settlement). This is why the rather ambitious goal of going from $2,500 to $250,000, hopefully in a decade or less, if RobinHood stays in business.
Others are welcome to join me but I figure not many are interested in the work and risk. I am still going to post my trades and a screenshot of my account balances and positions for anyone interested in tracking the success or failure.
Once the funds settle, I am going to be looking at Merck Jan 2019 options and Geron stock for my first trades, if the price is right. Both stocks should move up this year on good catalysts. Geron has a decision to be made by J&J on continuing trials for MF and MDS. A positive decision on this continuation should propel the stock from $3.60 to about $7. A negative decision will likely drop it to the $1.50 to $2 range. Because of the good OS results in the trials, I think a positive decision on continuation by J&J is more likely, which makes the play a good risk/reward. A buyout could happen and would probably be for $3B to $5B, or about $15 to $25 a share.
Merck is a slow moving giant, but the options are insanely cheap for the leverage. Keytruda is doing extremely well and it is likely to help boost the stock to the $65 area by EOY from the current $61 area. The options are cheap enough that this $4 move could mean a 100% gain on Jan 2019 strikes.
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Interested to see how it goes.
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Got my RH account fully funded and made a few trades.
Currently sitting on 500 shares of Geron and my one free share of ZNGA
Somewhere around a $150 gain for the first week of trading in the $2500 account, but it was only a 2 day week.
I am impressed with the speed of the trades and the ability to get fairly close to the bid/ask you desire. I thought it would be rather bad for something that is totally free.
I am excited for Geron over the next few weeks...could see a jump to $5 really soon, which would help out my little experiment.
Oh, and here is my robinhood link for a free share of stock when you sign up (I think I get one also, just like Epor did):
https://share.robinhood.com/richare462 (https://share.robinhood.com/richare462)
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Good luck. I'll be following.
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Made a couple more trades (in/out of Merck June 2019 calls for about $60 gain and in/out/in Geron for same amount gain)
Also received 2 free stocks from people signing up, which seems like cheating on my goal but we can subtract those from the totals. They are not stocks I would actually buy....Groupon???
Thanks for the free stocks whoever!
Currently have about a 13% gain which isn't a bad start considering it has only been a week. 60% gain for this year is the goal.
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A few days later, a little update. I bought and sold Merck and Geron a few times. Got a couple of free stocks (thanks, hope you got something good too!
Increased the account to $2916, which is a $400 gain not counting the $16 in free stocks.
$400 gain in a couple of weeks on $2500 isn't horrible...that is a 16% return. If you annualized that (assuming you could keep up the 16% return every two weeks) it would be a yearly return of 4000% (that probably isn't going to happen...I am shooting for 60% a year which will actually give me $250,000 in 10 years...compounding rocks!)
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Looks interesting. I've been wanting to do the same with my gambling money too. Might jump into this next year.
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Thanks for posting and tracking, going to be a good show no matter the outcome
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Hey, little update.
I traded in and out of Geron and Merck. I did not manage to get the tops or buy at the bottoms but did get some of the chewy middle. Both stocks have continued to perform well (I likely should have held onto both of them a little longer but maybe will get the opportunity to buy back in if they drop, if not, there is always something else out of favor).
Currently up about $700, or around 28% since I opened the account a few weeks ago. Not too bad.
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Hey there @Roland of Gilead !
Thanks for setting up this challenge. I've been meaning to post for a while but life has been pretty busy getting Baby #3 welcomed to the household. I would like to join your race though I've been at it with Robinhood for a while already. I have just shy of $6,000 that I am using for active trading. I am primarily using it for options trading but I do some stock trades as well. I do add a small amount of funds weekly as well.
I plan to post updates whenever I close trades. Best of luck to you! I'm looking forward to following your progress!
8/14/2018: 5,940.64
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Posting to follow.
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This is an interesting challenge. I just signed up for RobinHood last month. I don't have a couple grand of fun money to start, but I will see how far I can get in the challenge on $100/month. If things go well I might up that later.
My free stock on sign-up was SIRI (Sirius XM). I sold that for $6.79 at the first opportunity. My first purchase was one share of WAB (Wabtec) at $110.34. This is a supplier of components for the rail industry, and just purchased GE's locomotive division. I expect them to benefit greatly from being the only end-to-end supplier in the industry, so expect to see this position increase for me over the next couple of months. Maybe I can scrounge up a couple hundred to really get me started.
Here's my sign-up link if anyone else wants to join and spread the referral love: https://share.robinhood.com/kylem1194 (https://share.robinhood.com/kylem1194)
The screenshot of my portfolio is attached.
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I've had my RobinHood account about a year now. Only funded it with $250 and I'm currently up 26.4% in that time. A decent chunk of that is free stocks from people using my link. I'd like to try options but for some reason every time I click on the link in the email to install the newest version of the app with options and crypto it doesn't work. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app a couple of times with no luck. Maybe it just doesn't like that my phone is a few years old and is still running Android 4.4.4.
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Nice to see this thread from you @Roland of Gilead! I don't but individual stocks, so I'm totally going to be a spectator. Should be an interesting ride. I hope you hit your targets!
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Hey, little update!
Closed a trade in AMD and one on UVXY for a nice chunk of profit. Here is my updated balance
8/14/2018: 5,940.64
8/27/2018: 6,300.64 ($160 of new deposits, $200 of gains)
Also if anyone is so inclined here is my Robinhood link: http://share.robinhood.com/jonathl23 (http://share.robinhood.com/jonathl23) we both get a free share if you sign up using it.
Welcome to you @looshi ! I started out small as you are. Good luck!
How is your progress @Roland of Gilead ?
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Ok, so here is my update. I have mostly been trading in Merck and Geron. Geron recently spiked from the high $3 area to low $5 area when J&J made a job posting in Europe for a position marketing the drug that Geron and J&J are collaborating on. This caused the stock to go haywire on speculation of a early approval in Europe or at least that J&J will continue the partnership. $6 to $10 is a reasonable expectation on continuation of partnership.
So I have about $3640 in the account now, or a $1140 gain on the initial $2500. That is a gain of over 45%!
Remember, to reach $250,000 in 10 years from an initial start of $2500, you "only" need a 60% gain each year. :-)
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Closing out August and I almost reached $3800.
$1300 gain on $2500 in a couple months. Not that bad.
I picked some real winners with Merck and Geron. Especially Geron. It rocketed from $3.40 to $5.80 over the span of a week or two and has the potential to hit $8 to $10 by end of September when a continuation decision is announced by J&J.
Merck did well too, going from the high $50s to $70, then retracing a little to $68.50. I am a little shy of it at the high end but would consider it again in the mid $60s as I think it could move to the mid $70s by Jan.
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Posting to follow -- thanks for the thread!
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I tripled my investment in Robinhood!
Okay well that might be an exaggeration. But I managed to put together $225 to transfer to the account this month. Now I have 3 shares of WAB. Not much in the way of gains so far but everything is still showing green. Maybe a few bucks in unrealized gains so far.
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So close to $4000/60% gain for the year (10 years @60% reaches $250,000)
$3964
I am at my 3 day trade limit for a couple more days though so that slows things down a bit.
I wish Geron would pull back a little bit. I probably should have held onto some but made some good coin on it at any rate.
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How do you handle your taxes each year when you hop in and out of your positions? Is it a huge pain come tax time?
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How do you handle your taxes each year when you hop in and out of your positions? Is it a huge pain come tax time?
This is my first year with Robinhood but I plan to download all of the transactions into tax software and let that figure things out. As long as the net gains work out and I close out my positions, the final numbers will be right. I will definitely verify that the overall gain is correct and the correct tax is paid on that.
I have questioned this same thing on MMM for the people who churn and find credit card signup deals. *That* seems like a large pain at tax time and there may be quite a few people who are (perhaps innocently) dodging their tax on that.
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How do you handle your taxes each year when you hop in and out of your positions? Is it a huge pain come tax time?
I have been trading in RH since March 2015 and my 1099 each year has been 60+ pages. The way I have handled it is it gets printed out placed in the folder with other tax documents and handed to my accountant. Has been no pain at all. Robinhood also has a deal with Turbotax where you can have all of your transactions brought in automatically and entered appropriately for you.
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Checking in with another update
AMD is the gift that keeps on giving, I took some more profits out of my AMD trade for a nice chunk of profit. Here is my updated balance
8/14/2018: 5,940.64
8/27/2018: 6,300.64 ($160 of new deposits, $200 of gains)
9/7/2018: 13,990.99* ($7551.15 of new deposits, $139.20 of gains)
*Mrs. UnexpectedExpenseExpector and I talked it over and we decided to convert the whole Robinhood account over to the more active trading strategy so the trading balance got a substantial boost from bringing over these funds.
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Something to be aware of if you are trading on Robinhood:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205379-robinhood-making-millions-selling-millennial-customers-high-frequency-traders
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Something to be aware of if you are trading on Robinhood:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205379-robinhood-making-millions-selling-millennial-customers-high-frequency-traders
Thanks Cache_Stash! I'm new to this, so can you explain it to me like I'm five years old? Sounds like RobinHood is selling its customers' trading data?
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Cool project you've got going on here. It'll be interesting watching your progress
I have questioned this same thing on MMM for the people who churn and find credit card signup deals. *That* seems like a large pain at tax time and there may be quite a few people who are (perhaps innocently) dodging their tax on that.
Credit card bonuses and cashback are considered discounts on the products you buy, so it's not taxable income. Bank account signup bonuses are taxable interest, but you can't do THAT many of those in a year, so it's only so taxing (pun intended).
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Something to be aware of if you are trading on Robinhood:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205379-robinhood-making-millions-selling-millennial-customers-high-frequency-traders
Thanks Cache_Stash! I'm new to this, so can you explain it to me like I'm five years old? Sounds like RobinHood is selling its customers' trading data?
There isn't enough data forthcoming from Robinhood to figure it out completely. But, if you read the tea leaves, it means that Robinhood is passing their trades through high frequency traders and the HFT's and Robinhood may not be looking out for you so they don't look for price improvement during a sale so quality of trades is in question (they may be scalping some off the top which doesn't give you the best available price) or maybe they are using the data to utilize in scalping from others. Without more information it's hard to say.
This is probably true mainly for market based orders and not limit orders. That being said, you ought to use limit orders when placing a trade (everyone should use limit orders anyway - Robinhood or other platform).
The SEC ought to require more disclosure so people that are using the platform can clearly see the effect. Wall Street can be very slimy at times.
There is a little bit of irony in the name "Robinhood".
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https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/19/how-does-robinhood-make-money.aspx
Number 3 on the list of how Robinhood makes money has a much better explanation. But it doesn't address how slimy it may be (potential for scalping and trade quality degradation) or the fact the Robinhood may be charging the HTFs 10X more for 'selling' your trades.
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I'm not sure if I gave you enough information. If you need more info, I'll dive a little deeper (bid/ask spread and market making). Of course, you can google it too. The HTF's are doing the market making in this case.
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Thanks Cache_Stash!
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Initially when I made my first few trades I didn't realize they allowed for limit orders. I noticed that the price my trades was executed at was always $0.01-$0.02 from the current price but since I was only buying a couple of shares I figure $.04 was a lot cheaper than $5.95 or $7.95 on another platform. I suspected some front-running but at the volumes I was executing my trades it's a small price to pay. Still, I've since moved to only using limit trades.
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I don't really see anything slimy or unreasonable about any brokerage choosing to sell order flow. I personally would rather my brokerage sell the order flow and give me free trades, than guarantee I get scalped by giving me a $7 haircut on each side of my trades. I also see no reason to expect or assume that Robinhood, or any other broker for that matter, should not be making money off of their customers for the service they are providing. They are a business after all.
High frequency traders as a market participant also don't bother me. They help provide liquidity to the market, and make sure that when I want to buy/sell shares or options then I am able to do so. My last 4 trades in AMD yielded gains of 65%, 54%, 34%, and 28%. If they make a few pennies off me while I'm making tens of thousands of pennies then I guess I can definitively say I'm ok with that arrangement. And whatever pittance they make from front running my trades in Robinhood, I make back in dividends and capital gains from CSCO, MSFT, IBM, and all the other tech companies in VTSAX that profit from the millions of dollars that the HFT firms spend on infrastructure.
I was half expecting to see a disclosure of a long position in IBKR by the author, given that Interactive Brokers is apparently where the "sophisticated retail traders" hang out as opposed to the unrefined peasant masses that inhabit Robinhood.
I don't really see why the SEC should require more disclosure from Robinhood than it does from other brokers.
Prior to Robinhood showing up in 2015 I would have needed a about $2,000 to get started trading. When Robinhood came along I was able to get started in March of 2015 with a grand total of $140. And since their arrival they have done nothing but improve their platform. For me Robinhood lowered a barrier to entry into the market that to be honest should have been lowered a long time ago. I for one am welcoming the disruption Robinhood is providing to the brokerage services industry. And I will continue to enjoy utilizing their platform for my hobby trading.
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I have not seen any sign of poor trade execution on Robinhood. In fact I am amazed how fast I can get a fill on a tiny order at the midpoint of the bid/ask price. One might expect an instant fill on a limit buy of $5.75 a share for a stock that is trading at bid $5.65 / ask $5.75 but I am routinely able to get a fill at $5.70 which is as good or better than I was getting on E-trade.
I still stand by my opinion that Robinhood's strategy is to become a thorn in the side of a larger discount broker and get bought out. I bet they are actually running at a slight loss right now. That and the fact that the two coders in India working on their interface probably don't have a high salary.
On a side note....go go Geron! Do I know how to pick them or what? It hit $6.40 yesterday!
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Nice job on Geron @Roland of Gilead !! Looks like it has been crushing it lately even considering the 16% sell off today. Hopefully you were able to capitalize on that move?
For an update on my side of the race I decided to harvest some more gains out of my AMD position for a tidy sum of $1568.25. I'm really glad I disagreed with all the shorts on this one back when it was still range bound around $15
8/14/2018: $5,940.64
8/27/2018: $6,300.64 ($160 of new deposits, $200 of gains)
9/7/2018: $13,990.99 ($7551.15 of new deposits, $139.20 of gains)
9/14/2018: $15,559.24 ($1568.25 of gains)
Onward!
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On a side note....go go Geron! Do I know how to pick them or what? It hit $6.40 yesterday!
I had about $15 in cash sitting in my account so I took a look at Geron yesterday and saw it had dropped about 8%. Decided I'd buy 3 shares at $5.42. Within a few hours it had risen a few percent and I decided to place a limit order for $5.75. Sure enough it briefly touched $5.75 today and I got my $0.99 or 6.1% gain. Felt a bit exciting even though it wouldn't even cover the cost of a drink from a vending machine. It was entirely a gamble as I know nothing about the company, etc. Just saw a big drop and figured it would probably recover part of that in the next few days with how volatile it's been. Looks like my bet paid off. Had I set my limit at $5.76 though I'd be in the red right now.
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On a side note....go go Geron! Do I know how to pick them or what? It hit $6.40 yesterday!
I had about $15 in cash sitting in my account so I took a look at Geron yesterday and saw it had dropped about 8%. Decided I'd buy 3 shares at $5.42. Within a few hours it had risen a few percent and I decided to place a limit order for $5.75. Sure enough it briefly touched $5.75 today and I got my $0.99 or 6.1% gain. Felt a bit exciting even though it wouldn't even cover the cost of a drink from a vending machine. It was entirely a gamble as I know nothing about the company, etc. Just saw a big drop and figured it would probably recover part of that in the next few days with how volatile it's been. Looks like my bet paid off. Had I set my limit at $5.76 though I'd be in the red right now.
It is really volatile and is going to be volatile for two more weeks as J&J decides if they will continue collaboration. If they decide not to continue, Geron will fall to $2. It might bounce up a little but it could go as low as $1.50 during that day. If they do decide to continue, the stock should hit $7 to $8 but possibly go higher as 1/3 of the shares are shorted right now.
There were good signs they were continuing to pursue the drug (J&J had put out job applications in Europe for jobs relating to this drug) but then yesterday they updated their compassionate use list and had dropped this drug from it. They also dropped several other drugs so that update might be a mistake (it was dated Sept 4 which was when they had added the drugs in the first place). So confusing.
I guess what I am saying is if you buy Geron, expect to make $3 to $10 or lose $3 to $5
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On a side note, a stock that I have made a boatload on (Endocyte) by buying at $1.20 last year (sitting on a quarter million profit on that one!) reached $20 recently and they did a offering at $18.50, which is reasonable. The stock pulled back to $18.35 and I bought 140 shares in my little Robinhood account. The FDA has allowed them an additional endpoint for their phase III drug candidate and with this high offering filling in such a timely manner (three days, it is already closed) I have some confidence Endocyte will be at $21 in the next month or three. It does take up a lot of my available funds, but the $400 gain will be worth the wait.
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Took some more gains out of trades in AMD, F, and KO.
8/14/2018: $5,940.64
8/27/2018: $6,300.64 ($160 of new deposits, $200 of gains)
9/7/2018: $13,990.99 ($7551.15 of new deposits, $139.20 of gains)
9/14/2018: $15,559.24 ($1568.25 of gains)
9/19/2018: $16,148.37 ($80 of new deposits, $509.13 of gains)
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Broke $4000 today! From the $2500 initial start that is now officially a 60% gain.
Nine more times of doing that and I hit $250,000!
:-)
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Congrats @Roland of Gilead ! You knocked out your first 60% move in one quarter instead of one year. If you keep up that pace you'll hit your 250,000 target in 2 years and 3 months! Best of luck!
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I hope everyone has stayed out of Geron. Pre-market's grisly today after J&J walked.
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It is really volatile and is going to be volatile for two more weeks as J&J decides if they will continue collaboration. If they decide not to continue, Geron will fall to $2. It might bounce up a little but it could go as low as $1.50 during that day. If they do decide to continue, the stock should hit $7 to $8 but possibly go higher as 1/3 of the shares are shorted right now.
There were good signs they were continuing to pursue the drug (J&J had put out job applications in Europe for jobs relating to this drug) but then yesterday they updated their compassionate use list and had dropped this drug from it. They also dropped several other drugs so that update might be a mistake (it was dated Sept 4 which was when they had added the drugs in the first place). So confusing.
I guess what I am saying is if you buy Geron, expect to make $3 to $10 or lose $3 to $5
Yes, I was out of Geron in Robinhood, although I sold some $5 puts in another account for $1.80 so have a little loss there coming (I actually tried buying back the puts yesterday for $1.10 to make a profit but only 1 out of 30 filled, dang it. Overall I made money on Geron but not the hit it out of the ballpark money like Endocyte.
I spelled it out above, and it looks like the $1.50 to $2 range is what we get today for Geron.
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It is really volatile and is going to be volatile for two more weeks as J&J decides if they will continue collaboration. If they decide not to continue, Geron will fall to $2. It might bounce up a little but it could go as low as $1.50 during that day. If they do decide to continue, the stock should hit $7 to $8 but possibly go higher as 1/3 of the shares are shorted right now.
There were good signs they were continuing to pursue the drug (J&J had put out job applications in Europe for jobs relating to this drug) but then yesterday they updated their compassionate use list and had dropped this drug from it. They also dropped several other drugs so that update might be a mistake (it was dated Sept 4 which was when they had added the drugs in the first place). So confusing.
I guess what I am saying is if you buy Geron, expect to make $3 to $10 or lose $3 to $5
Yes, I was out of Geron in Robinhood, although I sold some $5 puts in another account for $1.80 so have a little loss there coming (I actually tried buying back the puts yesterday for $1.10 to make a profit but only 1 out of 30 filled, dang it. Overall I made money on Geron but not the hit it out of the ballpark money like Endocyte.
I spelled it out above, and it looks like the $1.50 to $2 range is what we get today for Geron.
Yes, your post was on the money. I bought a little in the $3s with some fun money and unloaded in the $6s. The irrational exuberance of Geron fanatics on this one was crazy. I'm a little afraid to peek at some of the Seeking Alpha threads; at least one guy claimed to be purchasing as much as he could, even a few days ago, spending thousands at a time, behind his wife's back.
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That hurts on GERN. The gaps down on news are always a bit painful. Hopefully you catch a bit of a bounce to help repair some of the damage.
Had a decent week here. Took some gains off trades in CSCO, HPQ, and BMY. Also closed a trade in LUV for a small loss. Net gains of $196.11.
8/14/2018: $5,940.64
8/27/2018: $6,300.64 ($160 of new deposits, $200 of gains)
9/7/2018: $13,990.99 ($7551.15 of new deposits, $139.20 of gains)
9/14/2018: $15,559.24 ($1568.25 of gains)
9/19/2018: $16,148.37 ($80 of new deposits, $509.13 of gains)
9/29/2018: $16,554.48 ($160 of new deposits, $196.11 of gains)
Enjoy the weekend!
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I ended the week at $4081 and change. Geron wrecked but I was fortunate to be out of it at the time. Had it dipped to $4 before the catastrophe I probably would have bought several hundred shares and be back in the $3000 area..whew!
I have a large position (for this tiny account) in Endocyte. This is a stock that in my big boy accounts has made me over a quarter million in profit but I think there could be a bit to squeeze out of it. With the strong offering they just had at $18.50 and with the phase III data coming up in 2019 plus the extra endpoint granted, I feel that a buy in the $17s has potential to make a buck or two.
Note that I always knew there was potential for Geron to drop to $2 and stated that. I did not think the odds were that Jannsen would walk, but who knows the mind of such a big company?
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Yeah @Roland of Gilead , your previous posts on Geron seem pretty spot on to how it played out.
Last week was a bit of a fun ride for me. Had to cut losses in a couple losing trades but I was able to make up for it by playing the weakness in the market with SPY puts.
8/14/2018: $5,940.64
8/27/2018: $6,300.64 ($160 of new deposits, $200 of gains)
9/7/2018: $13,990.99 ($7551.15 of new deposits, $139.20 of gains)
9/14/2018: $15,559.24 ($1568.25 of gains)
9/19/2018: $16,148.37 ($80 of new deposits, $509.13 of gains)
9/29/2018: $16,554.48 ($160 of new deposits, $196.11 of gains)
10/5/2018: $17,454.57 ($380 of new deposits, $520.09 of gains)
Best of luck!
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Welp, Endocyte got bought out today for $24 (finalized in 2019). I had 200 shares in my RH account purchased a couple days ago for $17.
I sold them today for $23.49, putting me well over $5,000 and a solid 100%+ gain so far (been about 4 months since thread started?)
I also have 6000 of those Endocyte shares in another account purchased for $1.19 (doing a little dance now)
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That is awesome @Roland of Gilead !
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Still going strong! Broke $5800 today doing a little more biotech trading.
I was thinking $6000 by end of year would be amazing, now it is looking pretty easy.
$250,000 still a long way off.
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This is interesting to read, however due to the nature of my job. I have never bothered to get into trading because I'd have to go through compliance to do it and some things are completely forbidden for us to do.
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Start of November and broke $6000!
So what, about 5 months to go from $2500 to $6000? Not horrible.
$6400 is the goal at the end of year 2 to keep on track for 60% gain each year to reach $250,000 in 10 years from the initial $2500.
So only $400 from that.
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You keep rocking it @Roland of Gilead ! You may have to adjust your goal if you keep up at the present rate.
I got busy in October and wasn't able to get a post in but did pretty decent on the trading considering the market.
8/14/2018: $5,940.64
8/27/2018: $6,300.64 ($160 of new deposits, $200 of gains)
9/7/2018: $13,990.99 ($7551.15 of new deposits, $139.20 of gains)
9/14/2018: $15,559.24 ($1568.25 of gains)
9/19/2018: $16,148.37 ($80 of new deposits, $509.13 of gains)
9/29/2018: $16,554.48 ($160 of new deposits, $196.11 of gains)
10/5/2018: $17,454.57 ($380 of new deposits, $520.09 of gains)
11/9/2018: $18,556.14 ($455 of new deposits, $646.57 of gains)
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A belated congratulations on the Endocyte buyout! Biotech stocks are my favorite to watch but I lack the intestinal fortitude for anything but the occasional very minor transaction (and I can only dabble in areas unrelated to my SO's work in medicine).
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Broke the $6400 mark.
Why is that number significant? Well, it represents the amount you would need to have at the end of year two to be on your way to turning $2500 into $250,000 in 10 years. Being that it has only been 5 months since I started this project, I am well ahead of schedule.
End of year three is a 60% gain on $6400, or $10,240
Sitting on all cash right now. Might be some bargains out there soon. I still like Arrowhead ARWR for some significant gains (or a way to lose a lot of money). I might buy it again in the $12 area, it was like $13.10 Friday.
Gilead looks tempting at $68 but not sure it would be a big mover for this tiny account. I could only buy around 90 shares. It does pay a $0.54 dividend soon though which would be $50 more in the account (stock always seems to recover from the payout).
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For all my millions of followers, I am pleased to let you know the Robinhood race is still on!
I have weathered this market downturn nicely and now am at $6537
I was at $6613 yesterday but bought 95 shares of Celgene today for what turned out to be not quite the bargain price of $65.75
Not too worried, just will have to hold it a few days until cooler heads prevail and it returns to the high 60s.
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Alright, I'm in, except mine is race from $100 to $1,000, LOL. I'll be buying stocks under $5 with high buy rating, on days where the market drops, and will stick stop loss on all shares. Conservative gambling :)
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Interested in following this as well. I’ve got very little in Robinhood and am risk-averse to this kind of thing.
How did you learn how to trade? Any recommended books?
As your money grows...do the size of our bets grow in charge? Like I would imagine only ever betting with something like 10-20% of my wealth as it grow...holding other money in coservative picks or keeping it as cash in by Robinhood account...
Anyway...congrats on having the skill and knowledge to do this successfully.
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I totally mess up on the last trade of 2018. I sold the 95 shares of Celgene for about $64, a ~$200 loss. I did this for tax reasons.
Stupid.
Celgene got bought out just 2 days later for $87.
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I totally mess up on the last trade of 2018. I sold the 95 shares of Celgene for about $64, a ~$200 loss. I did this for tax reasons.
Stupid.
Celgene got bought out just 2 days later for $87.
One thing I've learned dabbling in active trading on RH... I almost always kick myself after a trade because I "sold too soon" or "held too long". I've started to become much less sensitive to this though with experience. I've learned to step back and look at it with the perspective of "I made the best decision with the data I had available, there was no way of knowing." On the other hand, when I do look back over the trade and realize I missed something obvious, that lesson stings and sticks with me pretty good!
I wouldn't say I'm on your level at all, but I think I'm getting there. I took some nasty losses from September-October due to thinking "surely now we've hit the bottom". I took a step back for awhile and have started again a bit more cautiously. I've learned that when short term trading you need to use short term trends. It sounds obvious enough but it went against my long accepted thought process of "the market will always go up given enough time" philosophy. That's a great way to lose money when playing with time limited options, yikes!
In any event, it's all "casino" money to me. It represents 1% of my stash so I don't feel too terrible experimenting and it provides me with hours of entertainment each week. I've been having a great time, learning a lot, and even have started to make money off it again. I may post pics later of my drop and recovery.
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Update:
Well, funny story here. I was going to update this to post that I haven't done much with Robinhood while we have been out of cell reception range doing snowmobile rides deep in the mountains but it looks like one time I was on top of a mountain I was actually able to get a trade out! I didn't think it had gone through, so imagine my surprise today to find it had and my Robinhood account is up $400! This does make it look a bit too easy to make money...I mean if you can trade while carving the side of a mountain in 3 feet of fresh powder...
Below is where I think I placed the trade...while my wife in front of me is considering the slope of the mountain in front of her :-)
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That is too funny, wouldn't that be the life just ski, and trade on top of the mountain:)
Those are some awesome results, just wow.
I'm totally impressed with your 10 year analogy and the $6400 necessary by year three to reach $250K - mind blown.
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Posting to follow. Just got on the equivalent Canadian service, which is still in Beta, at Wealthsimple: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/product/trade/
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I have not done much recently with the Robinhood account, except tax time was sort of fun. They changed clearing houses mid year and while one of the clearing houses was in the drop down list in tax cut, the other was not. Fortunately I only had a few trades in the second clearing house and was able to enter them by hand.
Currently all cash at about $6850. Digging around for a something to buy...I feel as if I have missed the boat on a few of my favorite stocks...Merck is $82 now, Arrowhead is $20, Celgene is near buyout endgame price at $94+.
I am interested in Gilead a little bit, everything else seems very expensive.
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Ok I bought some Gilead Jan leaps yesterday on the spike down to $66 and then sold this morning on the pop and upgrade.
A quick $400 gain, bringing me to $7252 and change.
$10,000 would be a triple in less than a year, and it is looking doable.
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Milestone today! Some timely trading of Gilead post earnings has netted me another $300 or so bringing me to 202% gain since I started the account last June.
So that is a triple on my initial $2500 in less than a year. Not too shabby. Today I spent 35 seconds trading, while walking back from our sailboat to the car, so that is a hourly rate of $300 * 3600/35 = $30,857 an hour.
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Gilead's balls on trades are far bigger than my own haha. I guess when you truly have the money to burn you can trade fearlessly. Options are fun but they scare the crap out of me. I got burned a few times early on and am afraid to play with them as much now.
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Gilead's balls on trades are far bigger than my own haha. I guess when you truly have the money to burn you can trade fearlessly. Options are fun but they scare the crap out of me. I got burned a few times early on and am afraid to play with them as much now.
Well it was only $2500 I started with. As the money grows I have to keep telling myself it was only $2500 and the goal is to rapidly grow it 100x to $250,000.
Almost at $8,000 now.
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I just want to follow along :) I'm a buy and hold VTSAX person, but I did risk $200 in bitcoin a year ago and I sold a most of the profits right before the bubble burst last fall. I kept $200 in the account the day I sold, so now I'm just playing with the house's money and it is fun to see it go up again after several months. I'm not planning on buying any more crypto, but it made me interested in this RH thing with free trades. I might try another $200 to $1000 challenge with Robinhood.
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Following, may get in on this game at some point soon-ish.
My main question is, what resources are you using to stay on track with these companies? Google Alerts? Some trading/insider website? Are you just monitoring certain stocks to get ideas for how they trade and then working to buy low and quickly trade high again?
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I dabble with RH. $400 incrementally invested over the past year and withdrawals totaling around $440. The account is still worth about $100. Playing with house money is fun! I've also tried Webull for the free stocks, but I don't care for their interface as much. It's a lot of information someone might use, but I sure don't. It's mostly gambling, amiright?
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Following, may get in on this game at some point soon-ish.
My main question is, what resources are you using to stay on track with these companies? Google Alerts? Some trading/insider website? Are you just monitoring certain stocks to get ideas for how they trade and then working to buy low and quickly trade high again?
Almost exactly that strategy. First, I pick an unloved sector, biotech. Then I look for stocks with solid earnings, a good amount of cash on hand and good future prospects. Next I wait for the hate to pile on biotech, driving these stocks well below their normal lows. I buy and then sell on the bounce back. I have done this with mostly Merck, Gilead, and Celgene.
There is volatility. Sometimes I have to hold the stock for weeks to get back to even and make a profit. Sometimes I miss out, like selling Celgene for a small profit right before it is bought out.
Currently over $8,000 in the account, coming up on 1 year since I started. About a 220% gain.
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Following, may get in on this game at some point soon-ish.
My main question is, what resources are you using to stay on track with these companies? Google Alerts? Some trading/insider website? Are you just monitoring certain stocks to get ideas for how they trade and then working to buy low and quickly trade high again?
Almost exactly that strategy. First, I pick an unloved sector, biotech. Then I look for stocks with solid earnings, a good amount of cash on hand and good future prospects. Next I wait for the hate to pile on biotech, driving these stocks well below their normal lows. I buy and then sell on the bounce back. I have done this with mostly Merck, Gilead, and Celgene.
There is volatility. Sometimes I have to hold the stock for weeks to get back to even and make a profit. Sometimes I miss out, like selling Celgene for a small profit right before it is bought out.
Currently over $8,000 in the account, coming up on 1 year since I started. About a 220% gain.
Okay, one last question. When you buy & sell is it simply market buy/sell or are you doing limit, stop limit, and stop loss for your orders to better automate?
Specifically, I'm thinking I suspect a stock will drop to a certain point so I put in a stop loss to buy it. Then I know I want to sell when it hits a certain high so I put in a stop limit or limit order. That automates it a bit more. Is this how you're doing it or is it more you watch it throughout the day and buy/sell based on what you see at a specific time? Or is it some combination?
You've really piked my interest here. I don't have $2,500 to start with, but I can do some research and start at about $50ish/mo to build up some and see what I can do. Would love to be part of this race!
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Okay, one last question. When you buy & sell is it simply market buy/sell or are you doing limit, stop limit, and stop loss for your orders to better automate?
Specifically, I'm thinking I suspect a stock will drop to a certain point so I put in a stop loss to buy it. Then I know I want to sell when it hits a certain high so I put in a stop limit or limit order. That automates it a bit more. Is this how you're doing it or is it more you watch it throughout the day and buy/sell based on what you see at a specific time? Or is it some combination?
You've really piked my interest here. I don't have $2,500 to start with, but I can do some research and start at about $50ish/mo to build up some and see what I can do. Would love to be part of this race!
Yes I mostly use limit orders for buying and selling. It does not cost anything and usually can get you a fill with the low volumes we are talking about at a slightly better price than market. It is also a good way to set up buys and sells to auto trigger while you are out doing stuff like hiking or sailing. I have even done things like buy half the amount of a stock that I desire in the morning, set up a buy to purchase the remaining half at a lower price and also set up a sell order to sell the original half at a higher price. I have come back from a hike to find my buy and sell executed and I have my purchase plus a few hundred bucks extra in cash in the account. So pleasant to be able to make money like this doing practically nothing at all.
On that note, I reached $8631 on Friday. I made about $500 the past week during the market volatility.
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Today is the one year anniversary! I started this challenge June 25, 2018 by depositing $2500 in Robinhood with the goal of making at least a 60% return each year which would cause my total return to be more than $250,000 in just ten years. (easy right?)
Well, today I crossed $9,000! The total one year return is 260%. Not a bad start to my challenge.
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Congratulations!!! That's awesome!!!!!
Well, this thread more than any other got me interested in this whole thing so I started investing more aggressively with various stocks. I'm still narrowing down which stocks I think I could invest in more regularly, but over the past month I've been actively buying/selling I've gained about 5%/week which feels pretty good for a newbie! Hoping to hit $500 - $700 by EOY.
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Well, it is August 2, 2019, a bit over a month since I updated the thread and crossed the $9,000 mark on my initial $2500 investment.
It was a terrible month for almost all of it. I bought 20 Jan 2020 $45 calls of BMY (Bristol Myers Squibb) with about $6100 of my account and 1200 shares of CLSN (Celsion) with $2100.
And then BMY went haywire along with most other drug stocks. Celsion went less haywire but it is thinly traded. At one point the account was down to $6800 but very strong earnings on BMY brought it back up the next day to ~$8600. The goal was for the strong earnings to turn my $6100 into about $8000 and bring my RobinHood account up to $11,000 but that did not happen.
Today BMY showed some strength and I was able to exit the trade with an actual meager profit (sold the calls for around $6300). I also sold off the Celsion for $1.81 and now it is trading for $1.74. It is thinly traded though so putting in a order for 1000 shares could mean it spikes to $1.78. I like the idea of it but I just don't know if it is going to take off. The CEO and CFO have been buying shares at market prices which is a good signal. I might get back in it next week in the $1.70 area for perhaps 600 shares. It could go up big time if they scored a partnership. I have seen these companies go from $2 to $20 in less than a year (and have seen them go to $0 too).
Anyway, all cash now at $9291 (except for the few free stocks). With the trade wars and the attack on big pharma, all cash is feeling pretty comfy. But it is hard to turn $2500 into $250,000 by staying all cash.
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Whew! Dodged a bullet today with that drop. Since I had almost gotten burned on BMY I was sitting in all cash and I just watched the market sink like a stone while my Robinhood account stayed at $9300.
I am going to take some nibbles tomorrow though. I am looking at Gilead in the $62 area and maybe dabble in Nektar in the $27 area.
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Been learning A LOT over the past few months. I started at 500 in July and I'm basically at $0 change right now. But in that time I've learned a lot of lessons and started to figure out the difference between "Investing" and "Trading". I spent too much time early on buying stocks that message boards were recommending and I'm bag holding a few things waiting for them to pick back up. In two months, I've been almost $200 dollars up and as much as $50 down and I think I finally have a handle on the kind of trades I want to do and where it's okay to make sacrifices and sell at a loss.
I also just started options trading, which is an interesting gamble that I'm trying out with a few stock I think will pop up. I'm buying more slowly than I was before and selling faster. I find this is going a lot better for me than the alternative which was buy and hold and lose money.
And that's the biggest takeaway from this so far. There are two mindsets: Investing and Trading. Investing is what I do with my long-term investments, putting money into EFTs and the like and letting it build up for years and years until the nest egg is what I need (aka the Mustacian way!). But Trading is what I should be doing in Robinhood: Investing in a handful of stocks looking for short-term gains and selling quickly when there is profit to be made.
Had I been following the trader's mindset with some admittedly volatile stocks, I would be doing really well right now. Instead I'm back at $0 and looking to use my new mindset to work my way up.
Here's to my race, starting now, from $500 to $50,000!
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Whee! Hit $10,000 for the first time today! Ended the day all cash at $10,020 plus the ~$70 in free stocks.
Not quite 15 months and over 300% gain, $2500 to $10,020
Next stop, $25,000.
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Alright, I'm in, except mine is race from $100 to $1,000, LOL. I'll be buying stocks under $5 with high buy rating, on days where the market drops, and will stick stop loss on all shares. Conservative gambling :)
I had a lot of difficulty switching my mindset from investing to trading and spent too much time looking instead of acting. Missed a lot of opportunities, but overall not bad.
Deposit:
Jan - $100.00
YTD Gain:
Jan - CIG - $6.56
Mar - ARC - $1.70
Jun - NBR - $5.00
Jul - NBR - $10.00
Jul - dividend - $0.28
Total: $23.54
Pending gain as of today on shares currently hold: $17.95
No loss since I didn't sell when stocks dipped below purchase price.
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I woke up late this morning (7:20 am) and missed part of a great opportunity in Merck, but managed to still snag part of a dip and made $400 in a 1 hour trade.
Now at all cash and $10,491!
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I've been getting hammered in September. Part of it is playing penny stocks and holding way too long. Also, I've only just sold my first stock at a loss because I've had a hard time convincing myself that it's okay to sell at a loss instead of loosing even more or - even worse - missing some amazing opportunities. There have been several times where if I just had 100 dollars I could have made significant quick gains and I've been missing out.
My goal in October is to get my investments from negative back to neutral, sell off a bunch of my stocks to free up cash, and re-start with my new trading mindset. Hopefully I'll come back in a month either positive or at least neutral!
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Can you tell where I started trading (and holding) pennies? LOL
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Sorry to hear about your bad luck in September :-(
I had a little downturn at points but I just dug in and held onto the names I trusted were undervalued (Merck mostly).
I just hit $12,130 today, all cash. It is really amazing to think that I have nearly $10,000 in profit on $2500 initial investment in a little more than a year. Suddenly hitting $25,000 doesn't seem that far fetched, and $250,000 might not be the lol joke it first looked like.
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I just wanted to say you are insane. Insanely good.
WOW.
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My biggest issue has been holding too long. On multiple occasions, I had chance to sell at a profit in high-risk stocks. Instead, I held and lost out because of it.
I'm learning to just "take my profits" and then wait for the next good opportunity. I'm getting a little better at it, but a lot of my money is tied up in loosing products. I'm holding out in a lot of them for a few more weeks until earnings season when I expect a few of them to pop up again; maybe not to profitability but at least to have a bit more money in my pocket for my next trade.
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Yes, I do think part of my success is that I really don't get super greedy. An example very recently is my trading in Merck and Gilead. I bought Merck at $82 and change, sold in the mid $83 and then watched it climb to $85. In Gilead I bought at $63, watched it fall to $62, then recover to $63.50 where I took profit then saw it climb to $64. Sure I missed the top but I made money. Both stocks have fallen back from highs many many times and there is a good chance I will be able to buy Merck again at $82 or Gilead at $62 in the next few weeks.
I am currently sitting in all cash at $12,555, a tad over 400% gain since I started this challenge.
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Well it has been about a month since I updated. I did a bit more trading in Gilead, plus a little bit of other bios and have now broken $14,000.
Since I am getting near the ACA cliff, where making $100 more could cost me $8,000 more in tax, I have slowed trading. I do not think I will try to get much past $15,000 this year.
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Ah well, I blew through $15,000. I just had to buy into BMY on the dip yesterday and I sold today on the pop (March 2020 $57.50 calls).
I did recalculate taxes and it looks like I actually have about $4000 more room before going over the ACA cliff (where $1 more would lose me $8,000 on tax return).
It is within reason now to hit $16384 this year, which is the amount needed at the 4 year mark to be on track for my 10 year goal of 10,000% gain.
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This is fascinating. How much time do you spend on this per day?
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This is fascinating. How much time do you spend on this per day?
Not much. The trade in BMY yesterday that netted me so much was made while I was on a tour bus visiting NASA.
So maybe 5 min every few days?
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This is fascinating. How much time do you spend on this per day?
So maybe 5 min every few days?
Surely you spend some time researching these companies/stocks/trades?
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Surely you spend some time researching these companies/stocks/trades?
Not really. I guess I just stick with a very few companies who I have experience with in the past and trade their volatility.
I really take the random part of a random walk down wall street to heart.
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It's strange but my best trades have also been the ones I've noticed while randomly scrolling through my watch lists on break at work. Every once in awhile one jumps out screaming "easy money" and I can't help but take advantage. The days I stare at market performance and research for hours I end up doing something stupid and regretting it. It's apparently very easy to talk myself into a bad decision that seems logical but Mr. Market just doesn't agree with.
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Broke through $17,000 and so have now hit the 4 year goal at just 1.5 years into this race. Very much on track to turn $2500 into a quarter million, which is exciting.
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I was hoping to have better news by now, but unfortunately not. I finally got out of my worst trades, but then took a few gambles that didn't pay off. I actually am starting to (slowly) turn around. I've been hording cash looking for quick trades and have seen a few wins. As I unload the many small positiosn I've got I'm transitioning to looking at 4-10 stocks i want to pay attention to that I have more familiarity with. I'm also going to join a group for $10/mo. that gives me insight into big pre-market opportunities. I've got a little money set aside after the first of the year for that and I'll give it a few months and see if the returns are greater than the spend (a few friends are in it and doing fairly well).
All in all, this has been learning money well spent, I think. I learned what greed looks like, when to stop-loss, and when to take my profits. My biggest issue now is that most of my funds are stuck in a few stocks that I'm not quite ready to sell. Once I'm free of those (ideally by the EOY) I'll be able to focus on the handful of stocks whose volitility I understand and start working my hands at a day trade or two a week to hopefully build myself back up to 0.
All in all, I'm looking forward to 2020! And, ya know, I saved a few bucks on taxes so it's not all bad ;)
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Over the last two weeks I've been off of work. After taking a few days to "detox" from the daily grind, I decided to get back into trading. A few good plays (and a few more lucky ones) and just like that I'm profitable again! My total deposits were $538 and now I'm sitting at $577 (from $300 two weeks ago!).
What have I learned so far?
- When I have time to focus on it, I can make solid day trades. Unfortunately, my day job doesn't offer me the freedom I need to watch the market for a big opportunity. I've failed up until now because I haven't been able to make the trades I need too in the volatile world of Penny Stocks. There will be a few I monitor, but for the most part I plan to stay away from big trades that will require me to continuously watch the market.
- Over the past six months, I've gotten familiar with several stocks that have a fairly predictable swing pattern. Watching Roland has opened my eyes to this strategy and I plan to pick 3-5 stocks to swing throughout the year. This should give me the freedom to make plays more slowly.
- I'm finally understanding Options. The profitable plays are with larger stocks (SPY, Apple, AMD, etc.) But with those stocks there is a TON of money to be made. If I go slowly, pay attention to a few larger stocks, and keep cash on hand for big opportunities I think there will be some opportunities here in 2020
So that's it! I'm starting 2020 in the green with a solid strategy in hand ready to go. I'm sure there is a lot I will learn and many more failures in my future, but I hope the lessons I learned today will increase my opportunities for success and decrease my overall loss during failure, haha.
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Jan got off to a rather slow start while I waited for Jan 14, 2020 and a FDA meeting for Nektar.
But luck would have it, other news came out today on Nektar which boosted my holding by some $4,000!
So now I am at $21,000 and change! A great way to start 2020!
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I can't believe there is a thread like this on MMM. I thought I was on Wallstreetbets for a second!
I too have taken on a similar challenge. However I just want to continue trading small amounts for a while. I lost $600 in 2018 gambling on dumb options, but this year I have been much more conservative, just buying and holding VTI and AAPL. I'm using Robinhood Gold as well so I use about 30% margin. Has paid for a year of itself so far. lol
I've recently started getting back into options trading, but only monthly calls on SPY, setting limit sell orders for 15-20% profit. Buy the dip, set the limit, rinse repeat.
I'm limiting myself to only a couple hundred dollars a time as well. I'm not gonna blow up my account on gambling. lol
(https://i.imgur.com/sNbtVWVl.png)
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Roland - I think, for educational purposes, you should publish your buy/sell 'opinions'. ;D
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Had an insane week. Not gonna pretend that this type of performance is normal. lol
A few more monthly options trades on MSFT and I am profiting 17%-25% on each.
(https://i.imgur.com/7nWj3Yxl.png)
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Following and kind of joining in on a much smaller scale. I signed up and got my free stock of Plug Power :) Now to figure out what and how much I want to invest.
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I realize everyone is a genius in a bull market, but I am finally starting to understand this trading thing - especially options. I find that if I pick a couple of stocks, get to know them very well, and pay attention to what they're doing in the market, I can make some serious profits. After last years string of abysmal losses, it's nice to see some research + Limit orders + checking on it every few hours = some serious success.
I've gone from 40% down in 5 months to 65% up overall. That's 144% increase since my lowest in mid December when I started to figure things out.
It's amazing to think I almost gave this up. Now I'm switching up my strategy a bit:
1. I am playing options on a stock that I expect to keep swinging between now and earning in March. The thing has a $2 variance and it's so easy to buy CALLS when its low and PUTS when its high and make a killing.
2. I've started investing in some more expensive stocks that are on an upward trend and unlikely to be impacted by the market overall. I'm not putting a ton of eggs in this basket (that's what my EFTs are for), but it's an easy way to hedge against my third play.
3. I'm still putting money into penny stocks. Buying into an alerts feed with the plan to play pennies every so often. If news hits pre-market, I'll buy in as quickly as I can and get out via Trailing Limit Orders. I've found this method allows me to take advantage of a sudden uptick in the market without an opportunity for big losses.
Anyway, this is my strategy for the year and so far it's working out really well. I expect the next few weeks to include some more big gains as MRVL continues to swing between $27 & $29 dollars each week.
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Jan got off to a rather slow start while I waited for Jan 14, 2020 and a FDA meeting for Nektar.
But luck would have it, other news came out today on Nektar which boosted my holding by some $4,000!
So now I am at $21,000 and change! A great way to start 2020!
Congrats on the big win with Nektar!!!!
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Unfortunately Nektar did not get a good FDA meeting for 181 (they voted 27-0 against the drug). Evidently helping the opioid crisis by making drugs that have less abuse potential than oxy is not on their priority list.
I dropped back down to the $20,000 area since I was still holding a bit. I bought a little Merck on Friday during the wu flu scare (why the wu flu would be bad for biotech is a head scratcher but it dropped).
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All of my calls got wrecked from this latest drop with the virus news.
However, I haven't sold any for a loss yet. They all expire Feb 14 or 21 so I have time to recover.
Sucks to see my last two weeks of gains get wiped out, though.
I did trade a SPY put on Friday for a 10% profit just to feel something. Lol
(https://i.imgur.com/f26Lnjkm.png)
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Oh options... Gonna give me a heart attack. lol
MSFT earnings went well for me. Now we wait for Visa earnings. If that doesn't skyrocket, I will likely be bagholding those Visa calls until they expire worthless in two weeks. :( If you guys could cure that WuTang Flu today, I would really appreciate it.
(https://i.imgur.com/vhi3IiHl.png)
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Well I have made many mistakes along the way so far (VIIIIIIISAAAAAA!!!!!) but overall I am doing pretty good! I just sold a bunch of Microsoft Calls for 31% today and got rid of an overpriced AAPL call for a couple dollars of profit.
I have definitely found myself trading on emotion and it ALWAYS ends poorly. I've blown two day trades on stupid hedges that always lose money (but that is kind of their purpose) and so far 90% of my trades have been profitable.
Looking forward to the next couple months! My original goal was to save and accumulate 10-15 thousand dollars for a house down payment. However I am thinking I should just hold off until I get over the 25 thousand mark in order to allow myself day trading rights. I have seen millions of opportunities go by just because I cannot sacrifice my three day trades a week. I wish they would abolish that law...
(https://i.imgur.com/uYrKixXl.png)
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CORONAVIRUS 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
Holy shit I just lost so much money in a couple days.
Here is to hoping this stuff clears up soon. Thankfully most of my portfolio is shares and Index funds. lol
(https://i.imgur.com/ocwFLZDl.png)
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I lost the potential for so much money.
I had 100 SPY March 20, 2020 puts at a $325 strike I purchased for $3.30. I got scared and sold them at $3.65 last week (they had actually dropped at one point to $2 or so).
Today they are worth about $15
But hey, it was only missing out on $120,000
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Wow! That is pretty serious. But at least you made money. I am sure I have left plenty of money on the table from past trades, but you gotta stick with the plan. I am much happier with a guaranteed 20% instead of going to 100%+ and ultimately losing it all.
I bought a MU put yesterday and felt dirty and sold it for about even. Glad I didn't hold that over night as everything jumped this morning.
I sold 10 shares of my VTI yesterday (which was still barely in the green) so that I could reduce my margin exposure. Currently hovering around 46% when I was almost to 60% before. :/
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I lost the potential for so much money.
I had 100 SPY March 20, 2020 puts at a $325 strike I purchased for $3.30. I got scared and sold them at $3.65 last week (they had actually dropped at one point to $2 or so).
Today they are worth about $15
But hey, it was only missing out on $120,000
Damn - that would have put me over the top with all my goals.
Oh well, I'm thinking of taking the plunge, Merck and Gilead and Roche - gambling on biotech. Wu flu meds/shot?
What do you think Roland and Tacopwr?, worth a gamble?
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Merck at $80, yes.
Gilead at $75, no. $70 maybe. $62 like it was a couple weeks ago, a bargain.
No real opinion about Roche.
Be aware that the flu and 2020 elections could throw a big wrench into stocks and biotech.
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Got it, thanks, Roland:).
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I lost the potential for so much money.
I had 100 SPY March 20, 2020 puts at a $325 strike I purchased for $3.30. I got scared and sold them at $3.65 last week (they had actually dropped at one point to $2 or so).
Today they are worth about $15
But hey, it was only missing out on $120,000
If you were still holding it today would vaulted you past your original goal?
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Ouch Roland! I did the same with Stamps.com! It was one I was playing with for the past year after their big fall. I made nearly 5 thousand on the run back up. I should be ecstatic. Yet, all I keep thinking about is how I bungled by selling the majority of my calls before the last earnings "just in case" and how I should have put more money into them when I "knew" they were going up.
Oh well, hindsight's 20/20. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I don't know about y'all, but as others have said Coronavirus (and my fears around Coronavirus) have not been kind to me. a few of my ongoing investments are at huge discounts, though, so I'm planning to throw some more money into my account and invest heavily into them while they're on sale.
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Posting to follow, very interesting to read!
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Welp, it's been fun.
After the insanity with Robinhood yesterday and this morning I am done.
Luckily I didn't really lose any money due to the outage, but I am no longer trusting my money at this company.
Closed my options positions (for -98% lol) and moving the entirety of my account to TD Ameritrade.
I already use Think or Swim for charting so it should be an easy transition. ACATS transfer initiated so I probably can't trade for another week or so.
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Curious, more so then anything else. This little downhill journey on top to RH troubles going to kill this race?
I find the race interesting, even if I am not participating directly.
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Robinhood is failing us. They have had outages during the height of this market drop.
I haven't even logged in to check the past 2 days but based on what I had and the cash, I am probably at about $15,000 balance, so well down from my pre-virus $20,000. Ok, I will check now.
$14,334
Stemline really took a beating. I have 2000 shares at it dropped to about $5 today. The remaining Nektar calls for May expiration are going to be worthless with Nektar falling 10% today. Just a mess really.
I am a little worried about biotech right now because the virus can mess up lengthy expensive clinical trials if it infects the participants in those trials. Say you have spent $300 million on trials to cure a rare cancer but half your participants succumb to the corona virus...your trial results will not be viable.
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My ACATS transfer finished yesterday and I opened ToS to a lovely margin call. lol
I sold one share of MSFT near the top of the morning rally and that got me out of the margin call status.
My account is down to around $4,650 now, with a total position of $8580. Shit sucks but I don't have any more cash or buying power to buy puts. Honestly things are so volatile that I am not comfortable making any moves. Premiums are insane thanks to record IV.
I am just gonna try to stay out of margin calls.
Also fun fact: Robinhood margin is 5% interest, and TDA is over 9%. So that really sucks.
ROLAND:
Could you imagine getting into a cancer drug trial, hoping and dreaming you will be cured and then you catch the coronavirus? I can't think of a worse way to go.
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ROLAND:
Could you imagine getting into a cancer drug trial, hoping and dreaming you will be cured and then you catch the coronavirus? I can't think of a worse way to go.
I know, but in some ways I think I would rather go faster than slower. I invest in these biotech companies and I know they are doing good work trying to find a near impossible cure for cancer, but sometimes the treatment seems worse than just living with the time you have left.
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Well, I've made the investments I'm going to make. I have a little bit more money set aside that I can transfer over if a few stocks drop even lower. Probably not going to have much good news for a few months...but after that? Maybe some great news.
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I'm gonna start saving more cash as well. I figure things should start looking better in a month or so.
Puts are still too expensive and I can't justify gambling right now when people are losing their jobs left and right. Sucks to watch bears making tons of money every day, though.
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I'm gonna start saving more cash as well. I figure things should start looking better in a month or so.
Puts are still too expensive and I can't justify gambling right now when people are losing their jobs left and right. Sucks to watch bears making tons of money every day, though.
Call Credit Spread. Probably a few other fancy strategies you can try but that one is the easiest, if your gonna play the down. that being said, i agree it is not fun watching this, knowing people are getting screwed and won't blame ya for not playing.
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Good news came yesterday morning! I woke up to see that Stemline was trading pre-market at $12. I looked up what happened and it turned out they had gotten bought out! I had 2000 shares in Robinhood (also had 7000 shares in another taxable account) and this little boost has pushed me to an all time high of over $27,500 and a gain of 997% in under 2 years.
I now have no stocks in Robinhood other than the free stuff so will have to do research again now that Stemline is gone.
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It took me a few months and I had to sell some stinkers (and add some money into the market), but I am positive again - which is a huge relief.
All my stocks are in a good position and I have a few options I expect to pay off with some pretty good gains. The Quarantine has been relatively good to my day trading ways. I also have a much stronger group of established stocks that I'm investing in, and that seems to be making a big difference - that an buy into a ton of oil stocks near the bottom of all this.
I was honestly expecting a slower recovery, so getting back to ~$0 in May is good news overall.
Here's too more conservative investing overall and a much better year for direct stock buying for me!
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It's been a crazy year! I'm not even close to keeping pace with Roland but I'm still proud of how I've been doing. Doubled my money in the last year... this despite losing $20k in the past 2 months on foolish SPY puts thinking we'd see another drop. Thankfully I had some good profits buying puts on the initial drop as well as some more recent winners in the form of AMZN and GLD calls.
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Roland are you going to keep posting updates with your RH money in its new home?
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Roland are you going to keep posting updates with your RH money in its new home?
Not sure what this means? I didn't move the RH money out of RH.
Or do you mean what is my new investment now that Stemline is bought out?
I had put the money into SGMO at $8.70 or so (500 shares) but sold it a couple days later in the mid $9 area and now it is $11.50, so oops.
I also bought 400 shares of ITCI at $22, then 600 more shares at $20.50, and it is around $20.60 now so a little loss there.
I have pretty good confidence ITCI will be going up to $25 to $30 later this year if not higher. SGMO could go to $15...I wish I could buy again at $8 to $9.
Balance is about $28,500 right now.
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Almost back to my all-time high from a few months ago. Right now I am mostly riding the "economic recovery" train in a few stocks I'm familiar with. Most of my current investments are going to hit a recovery level and sort of plateau in the next 6-to-12 months, so I'm not sure what I'll do once they've hit those levels.
I figure the next few months there won't be a lot to report because I don't expect to make any big trades. Getting out of a few bad buys at or slightly above break even (thanks to pump & dumps!) and letting my other investments grow for now.
For the cash on hand, I think I'm going to sit on it and wait for a good opportunity. No reason to rush back in when I'm doing well.
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Roland are you going to keep posting updates with your RH money in its new home?
Not sure what this means? I didn't move the RH money out of RH.
Or do you mean what is my new investment now that Stemline is bought out?
I had put the money into SGMO at $8.70 or so (500 shares) but sold it a couple days later in the mid $9 area and now it is $11.50, so oops.
I also bought 400 shares of ITCI at $22, then 600 more shares at $20.50, and it is around $20.60 now so a little loss there.
I have pretty good confidence ITCI will be going up to $25 to $30 later this year if not higher. SGMO could go to $15...I wish I could buy again at $8 to $9.
Balance is about $28,500 right now.
I made an incorrect assumption based off a couple of your posts and thought you were moving your $$ elsewhere. Just a bit overly excited at this thread and skimmed the current page.
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I sold my 1000 shares of ICTI this morning for $22.20 and made a small profit there. Sitting in cash now except for 1000 shares of a penny biotech stock LPCN purchased at $0.93
Going to keep an eye on ICTI and buy again if it drops to $20. I am also very interested in SGMO if it drops below $10 again.
So close now to $30,000. I don't know why that number is a near target, but I would like to cross it by the two year anniversary of this "contest" if possible.
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Hope you stayed in cash the past 2 days! I had jumped from 67->83 the past 2 weeks and was feeling quite proud of myself... Down to 80 on Wednesday, 70 today (×_×#). Rebalanced some options (replaced some banks, retail, and lesser known insurance companies with wmt, brkb, amzn) and extended from jan '21 to jan '22. If it keeps falling I should be able to ride it out now. *Fingers crossed*.
Has your trading behavior changed any since you passed the 25k mark? I went wild on day trades for awhile back when I crossed that number. Found out I wasn't as good at it as I hoped and mellowed out. I rarely have any day trades anymore though it IS nice having the option to when an opportunity kicks you in the face.
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You guys are amazing. Too much knowledge.
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Yes, i was in cash but I did rebuy 1000 shares of ITCI yesterday during the big drop. Hopefully it pays off.
Pre-market is looking better.
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It paid off. I broke 30,000 this morning for the first time. It has been just under 2 years since I started this challenge.
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Sweet! Congrats, you're definitely blowing away your initial goal!
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Bought back into ITCI and SGMO, 400 shares each.
$17,800 sitting in cash, waiting for bargains.
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So why Sangamo instead of Crispr? I've been holding a couple thousand in crispr for awhile now in my other account. From what I've heard it's a more promising technology and already leading to more money and better trailing stock returns. Am I missing something?
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Sangamo and Crispr are both good, I just think Sangamo is a little better value at the current SP (or it was when it was sub $9, now it is over $11).
ITCI is probably the best of the three though in terms of potentially doubling or triple.
Oh, btw, I did sell out of everything today on the pop and sitting with $31,000 in cash waiting to buy back in a bit lower.
Still can't believe I started with only $2,500 and no more contributions...$31,000 is starting to trade like real money :-)
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I had that same kind of moment earlier today. I stopped and realized I was disappointed because my account was "only" up .5% today. That was still more than I earn in a day at work and I barely lifted a finger. Ended up spiking in the last hour to 1.5% so I got the best of both worlds, perspective and returns!
I bought some Jan 2022 calls in WMT and BRK-B. Expecting some movement in those soon. WM is killing the online grocery game/improving 3rd party marketplace and BRK has been silent for too long with a nice low price. I don't mind sitting on them for a year while waiting for a big news event price spike... but I really don't think I'll need to wait that long.
I caught most of the spike on ROKU and LVGO in my stocks-only account this past week. Planning on holding them for now unless I see something particularly worrying.
This AMZN call is my biggest winner so far money-wise. I've had some higher % returns but it was on much lower amounts.
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This month got stupid fast. Between my AMZN call jumping to 65k and my WMT call doubling I'm looking at my account and it doesn't seem realistic, but there it is. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm not ready to back off AMZN yet so there's always a chance of losing a bunch of those wins. AMZN earnings have me nervous as I don't think any news coming from them could match current expectations. However, I'm confident it will bounce back to current or higher levels after a short term drop so I'm sitting tight in it for now.
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Raeon, that is an amazing month!
Curious, what did you start with and what is your total gain since you started? Do you add cash or working off of just an initial funding?
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I started with 6k initially then added 25 a year later so I could avoid day trading penalties. That was in ~March 2019. So 31k initial investment, the rest are gains. I definitely got a big head start but it's been fun to do.
Edit for clarity: 6k in 2016, the rest added in early 2019.
If I could eliminate all my mistakes I might be over a million by now lol. Sooo many times I sold too early or hung on too long.
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I started with 6k initially then added 25 a year later so I could avoid day trading penalties. That was in ~March 2019. So 31k initial investment, the rest are gains. I definitely got a big head start but it's been fun to do.
Edit for clarity: 6k in 2016, the rest added in early 2019.
If I could eliminate all my mistakes I might be over a million by now lol. Sooo many times I sold too early or hung on too long.
I think that's the perfect time to reflect on the quote under your user name... Comparison is the thief of joy. Knowing that I would spend far too much energy second guessing myself has made me hesitant to get into the options game.
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I guess I missed the month mark since last update but up another ~30% this month. I added another 15k in cash last week but so far it's been sitting in reserves waiting for a good opportunity. Mostly this month's wins came from BRKB jumping up as I suspected it would along with a further move up by AMZN. Also numerous little wins in some smaller names capturing the run-up before earnings releases. I sold a few before earnings that I would have liked to take back. Nothing like missing out on a 15% price move (meaning a 300-500% option move) 2 hours after you sell something.
I started selling some covered calls in some volatile stocks. Cruise and airlines, silver, oil, NKLA, CHWY. I only do a week at a time. It lacks the fireworks of the long calls above but makes up for it in consistency. (1.5%, 2.6%, 0.46%, 1.98%, 2.69% is my performance for the first 5 weeks.)
I feel very comfortable with all of my positions at this time. Coke (KO) is probably the stock I'm most anticipating some good movement from over the next 6 months. I put 12k down on Jan '21 and '22 long calls. They have such low volatility that any increase in price causes a big jump in option value. They are still down ~20% from February and I don't believe they deserve to be.
The one big concern that could drop my value in half would be an extended(3+ months) >10% total market pullback. That's the ever present danger in leverage. On the plus side, a 50% drop would still leave me above where I started playing with options at. The success I've had with them so far has been worth the risk. This account was started with play money but has nearly caught up to the value of my indexed IRAs.
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Excellent work!
I pulled everything a couple weeks back to put a down payment on my first house. If I have anything left over from the renovations I'll try to jump back in.
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No huge news at this point, but I wanted to provide an update. I spent a lot of time in March putting money into the market and making some big bets - most of which have paid off (as you can see from the significant uptick!). Right now there isn't a lot to talk about because I've made a few bets on REIT and Oil that I expect to start paying off in Oct/Nov and really paying off Q2 of next year.
Until then, I'm debating adding more money into my account. I have a lot of "fun" money that's sitting in my bank unable to spend due to COVID and I'm not sure if I want to play it in the market or not.
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Oh, I want to play too. Should someone start a new thread.
I've got 2,500 in Robinhood, well now 3K as I just spent 500 on tesla--it sort of tanked not making it to the S&P so I figured it was a safe bet. But I want to turn my 2.5K into 250K. Who want to play with me? I do think I've only put in 2.5K or less so I can still start there.
I've got some Ford, Uber, a tiny bit Panasonic, an REIT (my only loser, holding steady, but still), and an energy company that tripled but I only had 100 bucks worth. Been hardly doing anything and I guess I started 7 or so months ago. Anybody want to play with me?
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@DeniseNJ Why not participate in this thread? Be part of the race! Update your numbers semi-regularly and add some screen shots and you can be part of the race!
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Big update today! I woke up this morning and checked the market, to see that ITCI was trading at $33 a share pre-market! I had purchased 1400 shares at $22 in July and sold August calls against them for $4 and change, only to have the stock drop to $18.50 (calls expired worthless though so I net made money). I didn't sell any September calls thank goodness and bingo, made over $18,000 today.
Currently at $45,868 in cash and 200 shares of ITCI I am still holding.
From the initial $2500 I started with in this one man contest, I now have over $52,000. A 1979% gain so far. Happy!
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Hell yeah Roland, that's great! The snowball is really going for you at this point. Do you have a hard time adjusting to the new totals when investing? For example, a 10% investment in the beginning was $250, now it's >$5000. I have a difficult time with some plays because the dollar amount seems too high/risky for a position but the percentage of total portfolio is within reason.
In other news, I was up to 220k last Wednesday. Today I'm down to 160. The tech drop hit me pretty hard. I'm set up nicely for a rebound but that rebound could be a long time coming with elections around the corner. Fortunately I was de-risking a bit the past month and moved most of my long calls out to 2022 and switched to holding stock/selling covered calls with 1/3 of my account. There shouldn't be much more risk to the downside now. I usually get a trampoline effect on these nasty drops. I see some places that get hit unreasonably hard and rotate into them more. When the market comes back I tend to end up considerably higher than where I was when it went down.
To others joining in, Roland just said it perfectly,
From the initial $2500 I started with in this one man contest
We're all at our own starting points and goals, this is just a fun place to share progress. It's not truly a race so feel free to chime in and chat about your race!
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Hell yeah Roland, that's great! The snowball is really going for you at this point. Do you have a hard time adjusting to the new totals when investing? For example, a 10% investment in the beginning was $250, now it's >$5000. I have a difficult time with some plays because the dollar amount seems too high/risky for a position but the percentage of total portfolio is within reason.
Yes, I have a hard time adjusting for about two or three days, then I am trading $10,000 just as easily as $1,000. I still get excited over a $100 gain though!
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It's been quiet in here for awhile. Honestly forgot about this one for a bit, but it's worth dusting off and seeing how folks are doing.
It's been a weird year in the market and I imagine most of us have seen highs and lows we weren't expecting. I made some big bets on oil back in April and those bets are starting to pay off. It also seems like the retail craziness from earlier this year has calmed down significantly, which is nice. And with the recent vaccine news, it seems like all the ships are starting to rise. Hoping to be out of oil by Summer and back into researching niche, undervalued companies to slowly make my way up to 100,000K!
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Seeing some great gains around here!
I have been dipping my toes back in recently. Mostly just buying Aapl calls and buying shares with the profits.
Trying my best to not lose money this time around. lol
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I've officially broken the 250 mark. To be honest I forgot about this thread for awhile. I was at 265 shortly after Christmas. I sent 30k off to the IRS because I couldn't bear the thought of a market crash in 2021 causing me to sell at a low to pay taxes for my 2020 gains. Bitcoin proceeded to go crazy and my 20k investment there paid me back that 30 and more! Ending today at 250. It still seems like a video game to me. I can't seem to connect the thought that these little pixels I've played with on my phone all year could now buy a house.
Advisable disclaimer: Options aren't for everyone. It's nearly glorified gambling. Leverage can cause you to lose everything right when you think you know what you're doing. I could still lose much of this, though that would take a prolonged years long 30%+ market drop to occur given the structure and diversity of my investments.
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Hell yeah! Grats!
That is some nice gain.
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I've officially broken the 250 mark. To be honest I forgot about this thread for awhile. I was at 265 shortly after Christmas. I sent 30k off to the IRS because I couldn't bear the thought of a market crash in 2021 causing me to sell at a low to pay taxes for my 2020 gains. Bitcoin proceeded to go crazy and my 20k investment there paid me back that 30 and more! Ending today at 250. It still seems like a video game to me. I can't seem to connect the thought that these little pixels I've played with on my phone all year could now buy a house.
Advisable disclaimer: Options aren't for everyone. It's nearly glorified gambling. Leverage can cause you to lose everything right when you think you know what you're doing. I could still lose much of this, though that would take a prolonged years long 30%+ market drop to occur given the structure and diversity of my investments.
Awesome job! What was happening during that last dip in your chart?
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Awesome job! What was happening during that last dip in your chart?
Nothing and everything! That was the low point of the market's correction from September 1 highs. Being leveraged the losses hit harder along with the gains. I did a little rebalancing around that time into companies more primed for a rebound but nothing major. When the market came back up after that my portfolio did as well. There wasn't any real company specific news or big single loss that caused the dip- just a pullback on most of what I owned.
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Has anyone gotten involved with the latest Gamestop/Nokia/AMC ridiculousness? It is quite interesting.
I am betting on Apple earnings today and feel like a boomer.
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Has anyone gotten involved with the latest Gamestop/Nokia/AMC ridiculousness? It is quite interesting.
I am betting on Apple earnings today and feel like a boomer.
Do you think earnings will actually push the stock higher then? I've owned apple for a long time now, and have watched many a price run up only to drop at earnings/product launch when they fail to announce they've figured out cold fusion.
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After thinking about my previous comment I decided the "play" money in APPL had gotten to big and sold 2/3 of the shares and diversified.
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I almost bought Gamestop yesterday, but decided not to at the last minute. Would have had to blow up a few other positions that, honestly, are much better long plays.
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Has anyone gotten involved with the latest Gamestop/Nokia/AMC ridiculousness? It is quite interesting.
I am betting on Apple earnings today and feel like a boomer.
Do you think earnings will actually push the stock higher then? I've owned apple for a long time now, and have watched many a price run up only to drop at earnings/product launch when they fail to announce they've figured out cold fusion.
Yeah it seems there can be a dip but I am hopeful that since destroying earnings even with the pandemic should mean that post pandemic sales should stay over 100 Billion. Open today seems to follow the lack of cold fusion dip, though.
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Has anyone gotten involved with the latest Gamestop/Nokia/AMC ridiculousness? It is quite interesting.
I am betting on Apple earnings today and feel like a boomer.
Do you think earnings will actually push the stock higher then? I've owned apple for a long time now, and have watched many a price run up only to drop at earnings/product launch when they fail to announce they've figured out cold fusion.
Yeah it seems there can be a dip but I am hopeful that since destroying earnings even with the pandemic should mean that post pandemic sales should stay over 100 Billion. Open today seems to follow the lack of cold fusion dip, though.
Yeah, I've been invested in and therefore following Apple since 2007 and it seems like "best quarter of all time" is almost never enough for a bump after earnings.
On the other hand all the other apple shares I've ever sold would be worth a lot more now if I'd kept them...
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It's been a bit, so I thought I'd post an update. The biggest change is I'm off Robinhood. Their handling of the meme stock situation plus a series of terrible Customer Support experiences over the last six months were enough to finally get me off the platform. I moved everything over to Schwab and I'm happy about the decision. I had a little bit of money in a few other Robinhood style brokerages and I just decided to move everything over to Schwab, so my new all-in is $1,300.
Schwab is not nearly as gamified or app-ified as Robinhood, but the capabilities and investment opportunities are significantly better. As of March 5th, I'm sitting at 3,134.50 - even with the February drop. There is a referral program to Schwab, but instead of free stocks you get cash. Between $100 and $500 depending on how much you transfer over plus they'll refund any ACAT transfer fees. I don't get anything for the referral, so I don't mind posting a link to it: http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/refer-prospect.html?refrid=REFERKV7CH98D
Beyond my current position, I should get $75 refunded from the transfer plus another $100 for using the referral link to join Schwab. Nothing huge, but an overall 5% increase to my account when those funds hit this month. So, I'll take it!
To stay on track for my 5-year goal, I need to hit $6,000 by July 1st. I have a few long plays that I'm pretty excited about (ETON, ET, CEQP, IVR, and PYRNF) that might get me there. I'm also at a point where I'm sitting on a pretty good chunk of cash (about $500) for short term speculative trades. I've kept pretty even on those plays so far (earn a little lose a little) but, as they say, it only takes one and I suspect we'll get another round of speculative meme pops post stimulus.
I'm really grateful for this race. I don't think I would have jumped into Robinhood as much as I did two years ago if it weren't for this race and I've learned a lot and gained significant wealth because of it. The above money isn't even 1% of my overall investments, but the lessons I learn from this account are paying significant dividends in my other accounts. Thank you, @Roland of Gilead !
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Hitting $6,000 by July 1st is going to be tough, though ET just had a bonkers good earnings and I'm hoping to turn that into a significant win on some long options I purchased when they were low. We'll see.
A lot of my speculative plays haven't done well over the last few months and I've gone into too many of them. All of them are in the red and most of them are probably worth holding as I expect I'll get my money back in the next 60 days. We'll see though. I may have to take a hit on some of those.
I'm almost out of all my COVID oil plays too, which will be nice to move on from.
Can I doubly my money in 2 months? That's a BIG ask, but we'll see...
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I will again have to remove some money from TDA account to pay some bills, so I thought I would give an update.
I sold all but one Gamestop share at close today. Not sure what my total profit percentage is but probably somewhere around 50%. Not great compared to most people riding that rollercoaster, but I am honestly sick of it. lol
Still begging AAPL to do something. I am right at break even on those 40 shares today.
My account is up a total of a few hundred dollars. Not stellar but way better than if I threw it in a stupid savings account.
Also of note, I no longer have any Margin balance, so that feels good.
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@Tacopwr I can imagine getting out of margin feels great. That's something that tempts me every so often, but add too much risk for my taste.
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@Tacopwr I can imagine getting out of margin feels great. That's something that tempts me every so often, but add too much risk for my taste.
It sure does! I try not to use Margin unless I am averaging down. I recognize that is digging a potential grave but as a hail mary on super volatile stuff (like GME) its the only way to make a shit trade end up successful. My initial cost average was somewhere around $300. Thankfully I was able to average down when it was in the $100 area.
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I second that. I haven't used leverage for some time but the few times I did was during silly whole-market drops like that Brexit week in 2016, the lows in Dec 2018, or of course the big Covid rebound. I didn't hit them at the absolute lowest but I still made a nice gain on the bounce in all 3 of those, amplified with leverage.
As an update, I was up to 355 at one point but I'm down a good 30 from the recent crypto drop (still HODLing) and lost another 30(true loss) getting too greedy with near-term call options that went south. Every once in awhile I have to get my hand slapped to remind me only to play with options 6+ months out. Currently hovering around the 300 mark. I was hoping to be at 400 by now but I'm still up from January so I shouldn't whine too much. Live, learn, do better!
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I'm officially out of GME. It's been a good run. I made around a $700 in total so I can't complain.
I also sold 10 shares of AAPL that were actually profitable. Hoping for another bump by the end of the week to offload another 10 for around breakeven.