Before I explain my voyage so far, I need to explain where I came from.

I am a married late forties male living on the East coast of America. I am the youngest 👶 of five boys. We grew up in a middle class neighborhood. My father was a civil engineer and he owned his own construction company 🏗️.

My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20, I had to be around 8 years old. The technology sucked, I remember writing basic programs that would make the screen fill with words. We later upgraded to the Commodore 64, which was slightly better. I remember a friend having an Apple computer that was much cooler 💻.

I soon hit puberty and lost total interest in computing. My teenage years where extremely fun, but very destructive 😈. To say I peaked early is an understatement. I was expelled from school my junior year, and was institutionalized before my 18th birthday. I was still able to catch up on all my classes and graduate on time.

When I got out, I decided to take some engineering and estimating classes at a community college, while I worked for my father as a driver/laborer.

After about a month I thought my best path forward would be to get into the carpenter’s apprentice program, and learn a trade. In high school we had wood shop and metal shop ⛓️, and I was always good with my hands, and I enjoyed it. The carpenter’s apprentice program is 4 years long, you work in the field, and every quarter you take a week off and they teach you the different aspects of being a carpenter (concrete, rough carpentry, interior systems, finish carpentry and cabinetry).

I absolutely loved being a carpenter, the sense of accomplishment of building something on a daily basis would make me wake up 🌞 with a piss hard 🍆 on every morning.

At the end of my apprenticeship, I was selected to compete in Atlantic City. I had to build a half octagonal credenza with raised panel doors and a plastic laminate top. I should have won, but the fix was in (haha).

During this period from 1989-1993, I also got married and had my first daughter. I had my 2nd daughter in 1994, and my last daughter in 1997 👧. I was 26 years, and I was done having kids. I came from all boys, and now I am with all girls, including (3) female dogs 🐩.

During my early working years, I was always ambitious, and would take on side work for cash 💵. I would build decks, renovate kitchens, trim out houses, change doors, etc. I would work for my father during the day doing commercial/industrial construction 👷, and would moonlight doing home improvements.

I was earning money I didn’t need at the time.

I was fortunate to have a brother 👨 11 years older, who was in the financial services industry. He sold me some front end loaded mutual funds, and we set up automatic investing. I soon learned that loaded mutual funds were not that good. I kept some money with him because he helped and advised me, but I put the lion share of my savings in T. Rowe Price No-load funds. Although I went through a few serious corrections 📉, they have always performed very well. I still continue to DCA into some specific funds.

In 1995 when Windows 95 came out and I started to use the Internet, I did a little bit of day trading, only to create taxable events. I took some futures and options trading courses on CD via mail. I had a lot of fun trading futures, studying charts, but I quickly learned to love options and their asymmetrical reward aspect.

I quickly learned that most options expire worthless, and started selling naked puts on companies that I felt I wanted to own. When companies I really liked were out of favor, I would do risk reversals using LEAPS, selling the puts and buying the calls. Most ended up expiring with negligible gains or losses, but some had exponential gains. I also ended up buying and holding on to some shit 💩.

I still trade options. I still have a self-directed brokerage account, and I still DCA into no-load mutual funds.

After the 2008 crisis, I said to my friends: “Give me one more bull market, and I know how I will play it”.

The 2008 financial crisis cost me about 1/3 of my paper wealth. I remember the feeling of watching my paper wealth evaporate in a matter of weeks. The one good thing was I was making good money, I was no longer working in the field as a carpenter. I was running and growing our business with my older brother.

I realized that QE was going to create inflation. I figured companies revenues and profits would inflate also, so I became extremely bullish on the market.

During my trading days in the 90’s, I read a book 📖 by Ted Warren “How to make money in the stock market”.

It is the most basic TA book you can read, but it helped me pick out some exponential winners by being able to spot accumulation.

I bring this up because I saw this pattern in MSFT. Anyone I spoke to about MSFT was either bored by its price action, or had owned it earlier and was no longer interested. It looked like a great accumulation base, so I started Dollar cost averaging into it at $25 a share, and have not stopped. I did risk reversals but cashed out premature. Although I’ve done pretty good, I have to say I could have done better.

My fatal flaw has been taking profits on my winners and letting losers run, this is probably true of a lot of investors.

I think my experience in the traditional markets as a retail Investolator, and my ability to earn and save money, has put me in a great position to take advantage of the coming bull market 🐂 in Bitcoin.

In Part 2 (if I feel like it and people like Part 1), I will tell you what made me eventually buy bitcoin, after dismissing it for a couple years out of pure ignorance, and the several mistakes I have made since.

#buyTHEMbitcoin #HODL&STFU