I had never had any financial background before, except for a mandatory personal finance class in high school that I regrettably didn't take much from. Fast forward a year, and I decided to download the new Robinhood app that came out. I was 18 at the time and was always trying get rich quick schemes, so I threw $10 into the app and gambled away. Gambling is definitely the word, because I didn't do any DD at all and just bought volatile penny stocks at market price and immediately set a limit order for 1% above what I bought at. Pretty shitty strategy, but not bad for my first one.
I don't think I ever had any good gains from that strategy. At this time I was slowly adding a little bit of money into Robinhood from my paycheck every 2 weeks, because compound interest calculator got me dreaming bout the possibilities. I was always fond of probability and statistics and for the next year and a half, I worked my ass off trying to create formulas that worked more than 50% of the time. I would use historical data to backtest the formulas and would put to use formulas/methods I thought would work. After that first year and a half, I think was down about 30% at my worst, with $2000 in RH. It was around this time that I said fuck it and starting bagholding stocks.
Around August of last year, I threw all my money into SPXL, TECL, and various tech stock. I'd always done technical trading up until this point, but decided to through my all into the technology sector, with SPXL being my insurance. I held those positions for about 6 months and I had great results! About 20-25% gains if I remember. So I decided to do something I said I would never do, and enrolled in RH's Gold program and trade on margin.
Everything my dad had my gut had told about debt told me it was a bad idea to trade money that isn't mine, but the last 6 months of gains had me so confident since the graph line was so stable for that time period.
Fast forward to today and my current % gain for the past year is 48%. That % would be higher, but it is diluted because of constant deposits into RH if that makes sense. I am 21 now, make $13.50/hour, but have managed to live very very frugal so I can deposit half of my untaxed paycheck into RH. Thanks to thank, my RH account value is now $22,500.
I just wanted to let people now that it can be done. You can read about Investing, but give it a try yourself. You can play around with just $10 at the start like I did with RobinHood since they don't have transaction fees. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but if my experience can help someone, then it is worth it. I can try to answer any questions as well.
EDIT: here is a link to my earnings graph for past year and my current positions
Submitted October 30, 2017 at 10:47AM by RolandWind http://ift.tt/2yXWL3b
