Originally Posted by Gunfighter

I've run into a tremendous number of "lucky" millionaires. Most of them were prepared for opportunity and knew what it was when they saw it. I've caught some great opportunities, but also missed some great ones because I didn't see them. There are numerous people, who were presented with the same opportunity (SBUX, AMZN, NFLX, 2007-2012 real estate), with access to similar financial resources, but didn't know what they were looking at.

I actually lost a friendship after handing over one such opportunity. I didn't have the financial resources and bandwidth to take on two storage facilities simultaneously, so I took the largest one I could while handing over the second. The friend passed on the deal over a 5-10% price difference, then became increasingly bitter as it became apparent he had walked away from a 7 figure payday.

Luck is often found at the intersection of Opportunity and Preparation. If you stay on Preparation Road long enough, you will reach the Opportunity intersection. It's only a matter of time.

Originally Posted by TegridyFarms

For starters—I have been incredibly lucky. First major investment was circa 2009 with SBUX when it was hovering around $10 and nobody would ever buy a $5 latte again. I put pretty much 80% of every penny I had to my name into that stock. That gave me a six figure starting point two years later.

Once I sold SBUX I decided that was a combination of luck and skill. I decided at that point to buy a little company that was mailing discs out called Netflix, which also doubles as my biggest regret. To the guy in this thread who said “I love stories like these, when the taxi driver starts talking about how much money he makes....” screw that.

NFLX Paid $16.02 a share and sold for $42. Had 1,200 shares. Still a nice profit. Today had I held that, those 1,200 shares alone would be worth $605,000. I fell victim to reading internet message boards on finance, listening to people say “bears make money, bulls make money, pigs get slaughtered.” Lesson learned.

Since then I have had some luck with some biotechs. Other than that I look for emerging markets/sectors/companies. WKHS, RMG, PLUG, BLINK, FCEL being just that in the EV sector. These are going to be huge going forward. I also own RIDE which I bought in the SPAC phase when it was DPHC (actually a reverse merger concept with WKHS).

Opportunities are there if you read, know what you own and go from there. I’ve made some mistakes (NFLX, FB—again sold way too soon, etc.) but that is tuition. Outside of that I have had some pretty good success and once the ball gets rolling, it becomes easier and easier. So for someone with $10,000–once you hit $25,000 that’s a big deal. Then $100k happens and from there as long as you’re disciplined and willing to stick to a plan good things happen.

Have my parents to thank honestly for seed money. They had set money aside for college for me and ended up giving me a portion of it once I got a scholarship. Best of luck Deltoids, just like our day jobs there are a million ways to do it—just be smart about it.

Originally Posted by mispoken

the resounding theme here is that the hardest part of investing is sitting on your hands and letting the companies and markets do the heavy lifting.

Originally Posted by Big E 757

I think he was joking. To only be up 10% in a hedge fund account and be up 87% in “another” account. I think he was throwing a little shade towards the investment community while subtly letting us know he has an 87% return this year on his personal trading account. Well done, JB.

Originally Posted by mispoken

Options trading is a great side hustle, but definitely not for everyone.

There are lot of misconceptions out there about the risk/reward of options, and I don’t believe (if you’re serious about it) you should attempt to dispel those myths on an airline pilot forum.

My recommendation, if anyone is serious about options trading, is to start learning the tastytrade methodology. It’s a probability based method that requires you trade small and often. It’s commissions are capped at $1 to open (per contract) and $0 to close. Their platform is top notch, uptime far exceeds think or swim, interactive brokers and fidelity (I’ve used them all). Tastyworks is everything you could want for trading.

Best of all, their programming is head and shoulders better than the crap you see on CNBC. It’s educational and entertaining. They’re underdogs in options trading but they blow the competition away in every aspect. Their favorite customer are the small fish like us.

If you want to trade options with fidelity you can, you can open a margin account, but be warned their desktop platform sucks and trading via the web interface is clunky and annoyingly difficult.

Always happy to discuss options and creating your own wealth through investing be it with options or straight equities. Don’t leave it to “the experts”. You’ll probably do “ok” but it may not create the generational wealth you have in mind, if that’s a goal of yours.

EDIT;

tastyworks is the platform www.tastyworks.com
tastytrade is their “media” and education network www.tastytrade.com

Originally Posted by mispoken

I like Tegridy’s dabbling in these EV stocks; I’ve done well trading contracts on them, but like he said the sector is HOT right now. Many have virtually zero fundamentals behind them and are nothing more than the figment of someone’s imagination (NKLA for example). These are fun to trade but 1% will live on to be the next TSLA. I wouldn’t start with them if I were building out a portfolio at this moment.

As always; NTFAFAP (Never take financial advice from a pilot)

Originally Posted by JamesBond

imho, people way overthink options trading. All these complex options are a waste of time and limit your income. The best phrase I ever read regarding options, and it is absolutely 100% true is that 'you never make money buying anything'. Sell puts.... sell calls.... make money. dyodd, ymmv, etc etc etc

Originally Posted by Gunfighter

You've identified one of the best things about real estate. The illiquidity acts as forced hand sitting.

Originally Posted by JamesBond

imho, people way overthink options trading. All these complex options are a waste of time and limit your income. The best phrase I ever read regarding options, and it is absolutely 100% true is that 'you never make money buying anything'. Sell puts.... sell calls.... make money. dyodd, ymmv, etc etc etc

Originally Posted by mispoken

yep; selling premium is the way to go. But adding a long put or call to cover the short contract to limit your downside and preserve buying power is easy to do. Managing buying power is the other half of the options battle.

One of my favorite ways to trade is around earnings due to increase volatility. Writing an iron condor or iron butterfly and targeting a 20-30% profit the day after earnings are released is pretty easy money. But, its complexity over say, a naked put, makes managing it if the stock blows out one of the short contracts a bit of a PITA.

I declare a complete deviation from the “side hustle” topic.