I once turned a pittance into a fortune, Then gave it all back and have been waiting for my turn again ever since. Now that it is knocking on the door. The pittance into a fortune story is how I turned five figures into seven figures in the dot.com mania of the 1990's. By 2001 the pile was back to pretty much where it began. Rather than describe the details of my assent, followed by excruciatingly arrogant and stupid demise, Friday afternoon the entire sad story was repeated, almost verbatim by Bloomberg and later in ZeroHedge: "For Guys Like Me, It's All About Sheer Luck": Why Retail Traders Are Facing "Catastrophic Losses" In the end it is a zero sum game, with every dollar lost pocketed by whoever was on the other side of the trades, on the other side of those "catastrophic losses." In retrospect, not only did I lose what could easily was a lifetime of capital gains, what also was lost opportunity from not being on the short side of a 78% crashing Nasdaq in the 2000-2001 bear market. That the same opportunity would come twice in my trading lifetime in a blessing being bestowed now (give or take a matter of days and/or weeks). The build up between the FAANG mania (and now Covid treatments/vaccines mania) and the dot.com mania leading into the millennium two decades ago is identical. How it will end will be the same with about a 200% certainty. From buying TSLA calls in early December (TSLA Jan 2021 $420C +1063%) to buying VXX calls on February 21st (+3676%), we know the rewards possible of being in the right trade at the right time. Those are but two examples of what lays ahead in the rest of 2020, maybe longer. Pie in the sky, or a summer to remember?
