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Comment by FuriouslyAdrift | Hacker News Reader

Because of my GameStop stock play, I am finally debt free for the first time in my life (after 35 years of paying). No car loan, no college loans, no mortgage.

It actually felt good to pay over $10k in taxes for short term gains.

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Do you think it's important to acknowledge that you got lucky with a gamble? If you have kids, would you advise them to make a similar move as you did, in the hopes that they also get lucky and win big? If not, advertising only the benefits of your choice just lures desperate people who will statistically lose their investments.

It wasn't luck, it was a well researched and well played short squeeze with a gamma squeeze before that. I made my money on the gamma.

I used to be a trader (series 7 and 63) and knew what I was doing.

Don't take this the wrong way, but if you worked as a trader and knew how to how to identify and research these opportunities, then why were you paying car, house, and student loans for 35 years until the GameStop opportunity came around?

An even better question is why did he pay off the debt. With the status of inflation and rates at present, it's infinitely smarter to keep the debt and reinvest the profits from the GME trade. He's clearly talking about something like 20%+ interest payments on credit cards but mortgage rates that can be outpaced by bond investments.

All around, he doesn't seem like he knows how to manage his money.

I only draw 65k per year salary but made an extra 80k in investing last year. I usually average draw about 30k let year from 1 year and a day stake. I can do that year after year. I work when I want and am beholden to no one.

The good money in trading is in fees. I worked in risk management (on the Merc) which led to compliance for M&A which led to counter intelligence for the Army which led to IT security. 9 years of college, multiple deployments, a divorce, and lots of living leads to debt.

And others lost their life savings. Some win, some loose. Congrats on paying off all your debts though, that's amazing.

Yes. Insofar as trading helps reveal the "true" value of a stock and thereby helps solving the allocation problem, it creates public benefit. And the companies financed by the equity markets create huge value, of course (parts of which they distribute by dividends or stock buy backs). But if you look narrowly at the gains and losses of trading, it's strictly a zero-sum game (well, negative sum, as the exchanges and market makers take their cut - though that cut in the good old equity markets is minuscule and far, far smaller than in the fancy new crypto exchanges which charge outrageous fees.)

That’s a really interesting mix of questionable prudence with total responsibility. Obviously things didn’t work out so well for the people in the other side of your trades.

Shorting as a retail investor is mostly a suckers bet that will bankrupt you. I feel nothing for institutional investors as the entire system is heavily tilted in their favor.

One can only hope that the counter-party was Melvin Capital.

There were at least two counterparties (one selling the shares, one eventually buying them), one of which was exceedingly unlikely to be Melvin.

Melvin and 2 other institutional investors held almost all of the shorted contracts. They were extremely over-promised and got caught out doing it. That's why the squeeze worked in the first place. They could have exited early, taken the initial loss and walked away. The WSB crowd would have picked up a small profit and it would have been done. Instead, the smaller institutional shorts tried to hold and got crushed.

Well yes, but only one counter-party had to be the "big loser" in order for OP to be a big winner, and there is a decent chance in that trade the loser was Melvin.

Welcome to gambling.

I very very rarely go for a risky investment. I am what is referred to as a grinder.

I am averaging about 16% YTY return for the last 20 years (and much better than that the last 5, obviously).

The trick... undervalued or momentum stocks that suddenly have big interest. Spot the trend and go with it (swimming in the big fishes wake).

It's OK to exit AFTER the movement breaks... never be greedy. Never cry about the profits you never got.

What tools do you use for that? I tried similiar strategy just by looking at the publicly available tools (e.g. MartketWatch), but it seemed I'm always too late, so I resorted to mid-long term investments to the companies I believe.

https://unusualwhales.com/ and just following trending on specific targets. Enormous amounts of reading. Basically, if the popular media is hyping something, I go contrarian or least start thinking that way. There's nothing wrong with coming in late or leaving late on something. Go into investing with a realistic set of expectations and goals and you'll do fine. Occasionally, you'll screw up (I missed an options spread that someone else nailed me on and lost $7k in potential profits just a couple months ago).

The best thing is just to go with indexes and spread buys over time (daily if you can) and sell only when you want money to spend, not because you're scared of the market.

No one beats the market... I just try to find the flow and go with it.

You misspelled stock market.

I think he got it right.

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