RobinHood race from $2,500 to $250,000

[alcon835]

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. 

[DeniseNJ]

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?

[alcon835]

@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!

[Roland of Gilead]

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!

[Raeon]

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!

[Roland of Gilead]

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!

[alcon835]

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!

[Tacopwr]

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

[Raeon]

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.

[Roland of Gilead]

Hell yeah!  Grats!

That is some nice gain.

[Tacopwr]

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?

[Raeon]

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.

[Tacopwr]

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.

[Alternatepriorities]

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.

[Alternatepriorities]

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.

[alcon835]

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.

[Tacopwr]

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.

[Alternatepriorities]

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...

[alcon835]

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 !

[alcon835]

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...

[Tacopwr]

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.

[alcon835]

@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.

[Tacopwr]

@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.

[Raeon]

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!

[Tacopwr]

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.