Well the first one at least.
No one but me knows how much I’ve been dying to write this post. How much I’ve been thinking about what I was going to say, what I was going to write, how long it was going to be, what I was going to include in it. If there was going to be screen shots, or pictures, or if I was going to save other things for other future blog posts.
But enough of that – of course everyone that writes in these has to put some thought in to it. That is the beauty of writing – hopefully you are thinking while you are doing it. Thinking at least about something.
The only thing that kept running through my mind was Rounders. I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie yet. I’ve seen it roughly 80 times. And mainly because I used to go on those long online poker binges where just the sound of it running in the background was soothing. And I’d watch it 5 times in one day and not really notice.
Near the beginning of the movie Mike McD says, “If you’re too careful, you’re whole life can become a fucking grind”.
For me, that really hit home. Even to this day, after working a quote un-quote “real job” (yes I actually wrote that out AND included the quotes) I still think I don’t have to grind out an 8 hour a day job M-F in order to retire when I want to. I still think I am smart enough to find money outside of working for an actual company. For a while there I thought I could make it at poker. I knew it wasn’t going to be a long term thing – because what would’ve been the reason of going to college? But it was nice for at least 3 years. And I still play pretty regularly; just now it’s not my only source of income. When I make money playing, great, when I lose it, oh well. It’s not like I’m playing to live now.
Another quote that sticks out from Rounders is when Knish says to Mike, “You’re making a run at it aren’t you? Rolling up a stake and going to Vegas”. This line has been playing over and over in my head since about May. Even though I thought it was “heading” instead of “going”. But the internet says, “going”. And I can’t get it to go away. It’s still playing in my head right now. (The “heading” version) And it’s not that I’m annoyed. I love it, in fact.
Here’s the thing: It’s not poker. It’s the stock market. I increased the line of credit on our house and I’m betting the house (literally) that I can make at least some extra money in the market on top of what I’m currently making at my job.
I wanted $100K. I’ve gone in with a friend and we’re splitting it right down the middle. I don’t feel ready to handle $100K worth of risk. But for some odd reason, I felt $50K was the right amount. Double the amount required to day trade and just enough to not end up going bankrupt if I lose it. Enough to make a decent amount of money over a year. Enough money to where a 10% gain isn’t chump change – to me at least.
And it’s funny. Because everything I’ve read about the market so far and building the bankroll in order to trade says, “Don’t finance the money you trade with. Don’t trade with money you can’t afford to lose”.
But for some reason, I know that losing might happen. And I’m ok with that. I think everyone says not to play with borrowed money because if you’re playing with borrowed money you’re more than likely a bit older than me and have less time ahead of you to make a comeback if you in fact lose.
And that was the beauty for me. For those of you questioning my actions – this huge risk I am taking on, just hear me out. I am young enough to pay off any debt that I might incur because of this. Yes. It might hurt. We have plenty of debt right now, and it hurts a lot. In fact, we’ve got negative cash flow until at least next February. Yes, believe it or not, we are spending more money than we make. But that’s just because we financed everything. No interest financing is the best – and in case you were wondering about that too: We financed $10K in upgrades to an investment property that we bought. So no. We are not dumping our money in to a depreciating asset. Thanks for asking and possibly assuming though.
I’ve just been thinking a lot lately – that the truly wealthy see opportunities and they take advantage of them. They apply their talent at the right moment and they never once look back. While the other 98% of the population grumbles every morning having to wake up, drive to work in order to pay the bills and feed the kids. Actually scratch that. I think a lot of people out there think that there’s just no other way. You work, and hopefully you save enough to retire. There is only one way to make money…I suppose luckily for the rest of us we realize there are plenty of ways to make money. They just require the extra time and effort outside of work.
One of my dreams is to work for fun. And work because I want to. So I want to get ahead. Yesterday I wanted to get ahead. The day before that I should’ve been far enough ahead that yesterday I could’ve maybe taken a little break since I was already ahead. Can you tell I’m impatient when it comes to this stuff?
And the reason I wrote this post tonight is because I just finished watching Say Anything, which I admit I thought was a great movie. The writing between the two love birds along with it being taped in
So I’ve got $50K to play with. Since April 2006 I’ve made a 34% return in my retirement accounts. And since I was able to do that, I figured I could apply the same sort of strategies to my real trading account.
And this Friday marked day 2. I’ve had $50K of my own property’s equity floating out on the stock market for 2 days. And although I feel like I’m jinxing myself (mainly since the market has had it’s largest sell off in 5 years over the past 3 days) in 2 days I’ve made almost ten thousand dollars. A ~20% return in 2 days. It’s not realistic at all. And it doesn’t feel real. Until I have the cash in hand – heck it may even be in my bank account this coming Wednesday if I were to withdraw the money and pay back my share of the loan – but it still wouldn’t be real to me.
And I knew how I was going to do it. And it worked almost to perfection. If I had made $4K more I would’ve been out of my mind. That’s the number I was really shooting for. But because of the market sell off I fell a little bit short of what I was hoping to make. In 2 days.
But that’s what I love about these zero sum games. Poker and the market. Now I understand that both of these might not be considered zero sum games…but I like to think of them as such. It really helps with the mindset.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum
For me, I’ve found that poker has a lot more randomness involved in it than the market does (at least I’ve yet to see the 7 of spades hit on the river for the other guy to hit the inside higher straight flush when all he’s got is the 8 of spades in his hand…over my straight flush in the market) but I’m still new to it all and sopping up as much information as possible. (Constantly reading up about it, talking about it and getting ideas from so many sources). I am a very “results oriented” type when it comes to money. I believe everyone should be paid based on output and merit. And poker and playing the market gives me that. They reward for good and smart play. They punish mistakes and crush you even further if you’re not paying attention and miss all the signs.
So really, that’s it. That’s what I’ve been wanting to write about for 2 months. And it was jumbled and I didn’t really make any of the points I wanted to strong enough…or maybe the better word I should’ve used is “eloquently” - but they’re there.
I’ve been very scared and very stressed about this whole ordeal. For a little over 3 weeks my right eye was twitching. And I know it’s a heck of a risk taking this large of a shot. But at least now I’ve got some breathing room. I’m extremely interested to see where I go from here and I promise to be content as long as I’m not losing any money. Hopefully someday I’ll roll up my stake and head to Vegas again too, maybe next time with some real cash to burn.
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