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| My bucks by Quétinbec 12/05/2019, 11:50pm PST | ||||
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This is Chris's Blood wrote: I borrowed $50k through an unsecured personal loan from a local (Middle Eastern) bank. My work used to have an agreement with the government where they'd cover the outstanding debt of any runaway employee. I didn't know about that agreement until this one dude I shared an office really fucked them over by leaving "after his father had a heart attack" with about $150k in debt. He even sold the furniture in his furnished apartment. He was a fat piece of shit who had a fake PhD and had the whores at a really shitty Saudi-targeted whore bar call him 'The Professor'. I kept a bunch of his business cards as a souvenir. Anyway, I only found out that they were covering our outstanding debts when they told us they would no longer do so after he fucked them over. By the time I borrowed my money, I wasn't covered by my employer if I fled, but Middle Eastern banks are still really slack with following up with debtors if you flee the country. You get blacklisted in the Middle East which reduces the number of airlines you can travel on, but otherwise, there aren't a lot of consequences if you don't plan on returning there to work. There are many stories. Anyway, I had this $50k and thought VR was gonna be the next big thing. I was leveraged massively through CFD's on NVDA (@ $20) and AMD (@ $2.67). I more than tripled my money until Feb 2016, two weeks before my wedding, when I got knocked down to $40k. There was an earnings report during my honeymoon and I decided I wouldn't touch it as I'd already been hurt enough and if it didn't work out, it would ruin the honeymoon as well as the wedding. It did work out and I felt like shit for being left behind empty-handed. I realized then that, success or failure, there was no escaping the shitty feelings so I might as well put myself in a position to profit. A guy in my office suggested I switch from CFD's to options. From there, things took off. I was up $700k two days before Donald Trump was elected. Blah blah blah, in 2018, the day before my daughter's first birthday, I'd cashed out over $5M USD. It turned out to be pretty good timing. I feel a bit ashamed of the way I came into this money for several reasons. First, the Wallstreetbets subreddit blew up a few years after I made money and it became pretty much a spot-on parody of my success. I've lurked there and have it as a subreddit but I didn't think it was healthy to post. I didn't really post anywhere consistently after this forum. Second, I backed NVDA on a faulty premise: VR didn't amount to shit. The stock took off due to growth in the data centre, crypto mining, and self-driving car prospects, etc... Third, I wasn't doing anything clever with the options. I was just buying calls. Repeatedly. I don't feel very rich. As a teenager, I used to be on the unemployment benefit at my parents fancy house where I played video games all day, so being able to live in a fancy house now and play video games all day isn't special. Same with travel: I used to travel on my student loan money. Travel doesn't make me feel rich. As for all the cool shit money can buy - most of my money goes on the most boring shit you could imagine: $75k for safety glass on balconies and around pools. $12k for sun umbrellas. $130k on windows, etc... The only thing I've bought that makes me feel rich are jetskis. Freshwater jetskiing is so much fun. I find the money most useful in the sense of superiority it gives me over other people. Most of the time, I feel I'm a better human being than everyone I meet because of the money, but I have to keep reminding myself about the money to feel that way. The moments I feel like a fraud aren't that regular. I'm careful not to spell out how much money I have so I don't appear an asshole. It's enough to tell someone you're retired. If you're young enough, they'll assume you've done something great. If they press you on details, hopefully you can befuddle them with financial mumbo-jumbo and they can put you down as a 'stockmarket-wizard'. No one seems very impressed by me, though. |
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