I started trading in the early 2000’s, as the big thing then was trading penny stocks and trying to catch the one that ran. We maybe had AOL, Yahoo Chat, and some online forums, but nothing like we have now. It was bringing in a check to TD office and telling them to buy something or calling them over the phone. We then saw the pot and hemp stock boom and made a good amount on those, only to lose most of my gains still searching for that big overnight pop. I stopped trading once I graduated college and got a “normal” job and just hired a financial advisor to invest for my retirement. Once trading became easier to do on TD website, and now phone apps, this brought on a new thrill of betting and thus my journey and rebirth to what I am today. Don’t get me wrong, I still meet with an advisor and use him to make my larger retirement investments, but this is for extra side cash, the rush you get on the big plays (thanks GME/AMC many times), and community we now have.
I was once like most of you. Buy off of some guys tip, “no matter the entry point its going to pay, I promise” or buy and hold because it will go crazy high and hit 420.69 price target. The GameStop first jump was one of the biggest thrills I have had in the stock market. We stayed up and slept a few hours each night, if that. We sat in VC on discord in Wall Street Bets running the chat all day, while discussing strategy. Most importantly, most of us got into GME when it was under $10/share and caught it early. This also led to the glorious world of options…or so I thought. (more on that later). I picked up enough shares, I think it was 200-300 but will have to go back and look and just 1 option contract for something dumb. I had no idea what the Greeks meant or expiration because who cares, everyone was buying them and payday was promised. You buy and hold for all these reasons, but nobody was really hitting on when to sell or taking profit was important. You just hold and if you were to challenge that you were banned or yelled at over and over in all chat. Just like it was promised, because dark web, hedgie, ladder attacking, fake share having, short bad guy targeting, the stock ran up to 483 from entries under $10. I was shitting myself, calling all my friends and family to get in on the play and we made massive amounts of money. But I didn’t freaking sell in the 400’s because hold guys…HOLD!. I saw a few thousand investment turn into almost 200k overnight. This was hitting it big. By the time reality came back, I watched the 200k dissapear. The stock rebounded to give me another chance to sell and I still held. After all of that I sold for around 70k profit out of pure luck. I then bought in very heavy and lost a lot when it crashed. Then came GME again and it’s little step bro AMC. This time would be different. As soon as AMC ran, we and most of the original members of this discord server played it similar with under a $10 entry and almost perfectly sold at the peak in the 60’s. Since then, talking to family and friends about the GME event has burned profit taking into my head and hands and I promised myself that I will never go back to being that dumb greedy person. I have a lot more to add to this, but wanted to start getting something out and will edit later. I will also go through how I learned to find scalps quickly, what resources I use, how to read the charts, education and practice. This journey also includes freaking peak performances, great trades and massive gains, then a harsh but temporary trip back to reality . The worst part about this type of trading is you often have to pay to learn, meaning lots of losses. Yes, you can paper trade on most brokers, but that is not the same. If you can practice and become successful that is solid, however most people need the real thing. You need to feel the pain of bad choices and lots of losses. It is how you attack those bad habits, what changes you make, control greed and as dumb as the saying is, Patience is a Virtue. Entry points, support, and resistance matter more to me than most things now, as well as knowing when to cut a loss. I have a problem of holding too deep into losses. I changed my habit by adding stop loss orders to most of my plays. Find what works for you to cut out the bad habits, which make you lose all the great gains we often see within this server. edit - I am all over the place and will improve this when I sleep To Be Continued.
love this and looking forward to see more. i hope to see more of these blog posts in the valhalla community. makes us feel more connected.
I have the same problem with holding on to losses and refusing to believe that I could be wrong. This community is helping me fix that problem. Thanks for the tips and insight!
JB, if a proven successful trader teaches the masses how to do the right things and fix the bad habits they’ll all follow (myself included) so this would be epic. Most of us learn from our own mistakes, with some mistakes very costly, and some cannot even make it “alive”
It would be great to have a ruleset framework (ie mandatory SL on all trades, entry/exit points at S/R lvls) etc…this would give great confidence to new traders, let alone teach good repetitive habits that could lead to consistent winners probabilities speaking - over a large # of trades.
Thanks for sharing
This is like the Tucker Max version of trading stories. Love this thank you!
Nice story! love reading these things.
Keep this going. This is great. I have learned alot from your call outs and try to examine what you are seeing so I can one day ascend and give back to the community.
JB, an absolute legend and love this blog. Looking forward to the full version. Appreciate how active you are in VC, fielding questions and of course, JB AMA hour. Cheers mate.
I’m still a diamond hand on GME with an $18 entry/share but I’m slowly becoming a paper hands with my other trades
Definitely should have sold each time it hit 250. Not sure if you will see that again and hope it does in the next run in three months if it does then get out and play other things.
Its great to hear the stories on how you got started!
Love the origin story. Can’t wait to hear more.