Playing the Stock Market

I recently got back into playing / day trading / gambling in the stock market. I have the standard go-to’s… IRA’s, 401Ks, Mutual Funds, Stocks, blah blah blah.

Doing what you need to do to save enough to retire. The standard boring stuff.

Investing is supposed to be boring. The more boring and automated it is, the more you are doing it correctly. This last big crash, I did nothing. I watch the accounts go down and then watched them go back up again. By not panicking, I’m better off today than I was at the start of the year. That is investing. Knowing the goal and working towards the goal no matter what happens around you.

Playing in the market is something completely different. That’s making an educated guess on what will happen next. Sometimes you are right, sometimes you are wrong. When you’re right, you win big, and when you are wrong, well, you can lose it all!

So the other day I open up my RobinHood app and look at my $800 in there and figured it was time to play with the options again.

Quick story: I was a very good options trader back in my brokerage days when I was a trader. Made some money and figured I could try again.

With everyone at home you have to imagine delivery services are up. First one up to earning is FedEx. I did buy some, but being my first purchase I didn’t have the gumption and stomach to stay in until earnings day. I should have! They ran up 25% and beat earnings by a huge margin.

Well that lined up next for UPS. What was good for one was good for the other right? Or so I hoped. I purchased a whopping $400 of options. 4 contracts for an out of the money call. The day before the earnings call the market was in turmoil and I once again thought about pulling out to save what little I had in this account.

Why care about a tiny $400? Not sure. Of course I shouldn’t have, but it was all I had in that account so see it go to zero means I could have used it for something better.

Regardless, I let it ride. I was confident I was right.