This was supposed to be a single interview, but as we chatted and got sucked into the story, we had no other choice to be break it up into a two part interview. Chat room member “MR” breaks down his journey with us which is truly fascinating. He’s been around for a long time and has seen multiple Bull and Bear markets, including some epic “bubble pops”. This included oa “pop” that took his seven figure portfolio down to below zero… in other words, he owed his broker money! Get ready for a wild ride!
Notes:
At a young age, MR was able to witness his parents retire at a very young age and started to wonder how we would achieve a similar feat in his lifetime.
After graduating high school and college, MR joined the same electrical union many of his family members were in. While working in the field for 5 years, he had accumulated a good amount of money as he continued to live a very frugal life.
MR was put in touch with an accounts manager at a brokerage house and after much resistance from this person, he agreed to take on MR’s account. While MR ideally wanted to be very aggressive (considering he was a 25 year old), he decided to respect the manager’s style of trading the market conservatively.
To move toward something more aggressive, MR decided to open a smaller account at another firm and strictly focus on the supply chain for these major tech companies that were booming.
Toward the end of the dot com bubble, MR suffered a huge portfolio swing which just about wiped him out. This has helped him recognize various topping patterns which serve as warning signs for him to close positions and stay in cash.
MR went back to his roots and traded suppliers for various tech names and not only recouped his losses from earlier but took it to new all time highs.
Quotes:
“I asked my boss how he was going to retire. He said ‘the working man is a sucker. You gotta be in the stock market.’” tweet this quote
“I really knew nothing about the stock market besides it was a way to retire early.” tweet this quote
“I did not want to take the risk buying a ‘.com’ website. I wanted to be involved with their suppliers.” tweet this quote
“This space was on fire and I had dollar signs in my eyes. I was margined heavily. Seven-figures margined.” tweet this quote
“On December’s closing statement my account was over 7 figures then March 31st my statement was -20,000 dollars.” tweet this quote
“People don’t understand how much of it is psychological. I believe I punished myself for all the people who got hit by not selling.” tweet this quote
