Member-only story
How I missed out on a $13,000 bonus at my day job by trading on Robinhood
Why your hours tracking the stock market are better spent in billable hours
2020 was a tragic year, but if you were rich, and had money to burn, the stock market has — on the whole — been good to you. Basically, if you kept money in the market, and ignored everything else, you likely saw a 15 percent return. Not bad.
But I could do better, right?
After all, we read stories this year of average investors making millions on speculative options bets. Sure, a lot of people lost everything, but they were dumb right? And if you went to college, and get a professional degree, you’re hopefully careful.
But that’s also the problem.
$20,000 sounds like a lot of money. It is and it isn’t. Most of my money is in a retirement account that I will never look at for another 30 years. But at the start of the pandemic, we had some savings and we wanted to see what we could do with it.
I made a few guesses on what people needed in a pandemic, and what other investors would put money in. I was right for the most part. I sometimes saw 3,000 percent returns on some of my more speculative bets. But can you really call it a bet if you’re only in for $100? And what about how long you plan on staying in that bet? To know that answer, you need to spend a lot of time getting educated about the stock market, and even when you do, it’s still somewhat of a crapshoot.
Financial advisors have been telling this to people like me for years
As a lawyer, if I wanted to make more money, the surest way to get there would be stick to my day job. That means work longer, or get a better paying job. Of course, to get a better paying job means to promote up — which would also necessitate working longer hours or leaving…
