While some may call the over-arching theme of this interview “common sense”, the problem with that is common sense isn’t very common anymore. Our guest from the community, Jody, approached the market in a very strategic, yet simple way. Again, some may say “duh!”, but it is also one of those things that in many cases hides in plain sight. Bottom line, when you are unsure of something, go find something that you feel safe in and don’t push the envelope. Jody has done, and continues to illustrate a great job of doing exactly that.
Notes:
Jody’s introduction to the market was similar to many, a 401k that a job provided matching for. This was back in 1999. It wasn’t until 2008 that he took a more active approach. After speaking with some fellow co workers, he had the idea to take his entire portfolio and reinvest it into the company he worked at since the shares were down 75% due to the market crash.
After doubling his money in about a month, he decided to take profits and put it back into other funds. He got a love letter from the brokerage saying that he is not suppose to be actively trading these accounts since they are managed.
As time goes on, Jody went back to school and changed jobs a few times. In the transition between companies, some of his funds went into an eTrade account. He makes an important decision in the sense that he recognized he didn’t know what he was doing so rather than gamble with that account he moved it back into his new companies managed funds.
He finds Clay online and checks out all the free training material available. At the same time he notices a co worker who is trading at work with Robinhood. Jody now was interested in lower priced penny stocks so that he could theoretically turn a larger profit based on a larger move these stocks sometimes make. He still had an uneasy feeling and went back into cash.
After watching the video regarding penny stocks versus options, Jody decided to learn how to trade options. He went through a few courses and is now working on honing his trading methodology.
Quotes:
“My 401k wasn’t really growing much. Then 2008 hit. Our company went from 30 dollars a share to as low as 7 or 8.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. It was kind of scary to have money in a brokerage so I rolled everything back into my 401k.”
“In programming, you can see what’s breaking during debugging. In trading, when you lose money, you have no idea. You’re just losing.”
“I made 300 dollars from CIE. I pulled that money and bought RvR Trading. My account is trending up now.”
