How I made $60k then promptly lost it all and ended up owing taxes I couldn't pay...

in #story8 years ago

The rise and fall of an early 20 something with wonder in his eyes and greed in his veins! 

This story takes place several years back, around 2006 to be exact...

I was a couple years into my college career when I decided I needed to figure out a way to make some extra income. I didn't have time to work any traditional jobs because I was playing 2 sports in college at the time. However, every now and then I had a few hours here and there where I wasn't studying or practicing for sports. 

The money I had saved up previously was running low and I knew I needed to find something that would bring in some income, or at least stop the drain on my savings account. This was right about the time I was going to turn 21 and naturally I had been getting interested in Casinos as they were now available to me for the first time, well at least legally. :)

It wasn't so much the gambling that interested me, it was the potential to make some extra money that really motivated me. After hearing it was the only beatable game in the Casino, I was instantly enthralled with "Blackjack". I started to read up all I could on learning the basic strategy of the game. Once that was mastered I started spending my time getting into the more lucrative (or so I'd heard) card counting aspect. 

I spent every spare moment I had practicing and learning all I could. After a couple weeks I could keep the running count in my head, convert to the true count, and adjust my bets accordingly all while carrying on a conversation about any of the local sports teams with a random stranger at the table. I had it down. 

Luckily this was happening right about the time my basketball season was ending, so it gave me extra time on the weekends to practice my craft at the casinos. Surprisingly, my strategy started working right away. My first couple trips I went into the Casino with between $100 and $200 and would routinely leave with $250-$400 each time. 

The casino didn't become a place I would go for fun, it became a place I would go to anytime I needed some extra income. The first 8 times I went, I left up more money than I came with every single time except for one, and that one I didn't actually lose, I broke even. 

The problem was that this was extremely time consuming. Yes it was nice to make $100 on a Friday night, but I would often have to spend 6-12 hours in one sitting doing it and it was kind of a long drive to get there. It really was a lot of work and effort. Not to mention it killed my social life. That combined with the fact that my golf season would be starting shortly meant that I needed to figure out a better way to make some money. I had to figure out a better way to make some money without having to spend so much time... I needed some passive income. 

Enter the stock market...

Right about that time my friend had been telling me about some extra money he was making investing in penny stocks. I thought to myself, this is perfect. I can invest the money and let it earn for me. I won't need to spend 12 hour nights sitting in a smokey casino, I can go out with my friends and let my penny stocks take off and make me rich. So, I told him to send me everything he knew about them and I would get busy doing some research. I love to research things before I just jump in and this wasn't going to be any different. 

After spending much of the weekend going over papers and websites I found a stock that had been heavily promoted. It was a small mining stock that was currently trading for $2 a share. It had been as high as $4 and the promotional letters were saying it could be the next $80 stock if their exploratory wells showed some big reserves. So, I decided I would jump in with most of my paltry savings, roughly $2k at the time. 

That would prove to be a bad idea, however, as just about every single day it would go down $.10 or so. In just a few weeks the stock was sitting under $1 and I was feeling pretty down about it. I shoulda stuck with the casinos I thought to myself. However, I was determined not to sell at this point because I was "too far down to sell", terrible investing rational by the way. 

Sure enough, that $1 level would be a distant memory as well as the days and weeks went by. Pretty soon the stock was sitting below $.20 and most of my investment was now gone. Ok, I thought to myself this was a learning experience. I really need to figure out how these penny stocks work and figure out when and when not to buy them. So, I sold what little I had left and began my search for the next one.  

After doing plenty of more research I decided that message boards were often a good place to find hot stocks. I spent the next several days scouring the yahoo.finance message boards. I made some new friends along the way and they pointed me to a couple stocks they felt were likely to be promoted in the future. That was the secret I learned, the fundamentals didn't mean much in penny stock land, it was all about the promotions. 

So, I took the $1200 I had left in my savings account and I spread it out over 2 stocks. One was a cleaning company that sold soap infused sponges and the other was a medical supply company that had some hot new gadgets in the works. Luckily for me one of these hot new gadgets had to do with the swine flu vaccine. Which was very big news at the time. 

About 2 weeks after I had bought the stock they came out with an announcement where a big pharmaceutical company was going to be buying their swine flu vaccine delivery device. The stock went absolutely bananas. 

It was trading for under a penny at the time and shot to over $.20 a share within 2 days. That doesn't sound like much, but my little $800 investment was now worth close to $30k. I couldn't believe it! I hit the sell button as fast as I could and just like that, my bank account now showed $30k. 

Now that is what I am talking about I said to myself! This is the kind of stuff I had been looking for! With $30k to my name I am ready for the real fun to begin...

The rest will be continued tomorrow in Part II...

Live well my friends!

Image Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-firestone/why-the-market-keeps-goin_b_4466037.html

http://www.ukcasinochecker.com/2014/11/card-counting/

http://www.bilderstock.eu/

Follow: @jrcornel

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Nice story, and great bit of early success! Kind of similar to what happened to me after I bought Ether early on. I have the feeling there's a big "but" coming though.

By the way, anyone who loves Blackjack can now feed their addiction on the blockchain with this fascinating new Ethereum app that just launched: http://blockjack.io

You need to be using MetaMask in Chrome or the Mist browser to play.

Haha yes there is a very large "but" coming...

Great beginning to the story. I was heavy into stock and options between 2005 and 2010. I never caught a wild ride like you. I invested like I was 70 years old but came out on top but ended up take the money an invested it in real estate. I was never working with enough money to make all the research worth my time. I'm looking forward to the next part!

That is awesome! I think you were probably one of the few that made more money than you went in with! Nice job :)

When you start out, winning is more dangerous than losing. Looking forward to seeing what happens next...

You are very right. Experience is always the best teacher though right?! ;)

I totally agree.. it makes it seem too easy.

What a brilliant post and fantastic that you have earned so much.
Well done kidda and must look at penny shares myself.
Amazing why more people have not read you your post. Already following

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After spending much of the weekend going over papers and websites I found a stock that had been heavily promoted. It was a small mining stock that was currently trading for $2 a share. It had been as high as $4

haha, I thought you were talking about Steem for a moment. :D

Nice story, can relate somewhat!

Haha yea I guess it could be interchangeable had you bought steem around $2.

Really? What happened with you?

I had the bad luck of timing and trading them off way too early.

Expanse at 5-10k sat,
Darkcoin (dash) at 10 cents or something...

same with many others I happened to be mining but couldn't hold them long enough.

Oh man, that always eats at you... What do you think is worse, selling too soon and watching the stock/currency go up 10X from where you sold, or holding something too long and losing all of your original investment? Which one hurts more?

can't wait for tomorrow now!

Haha me too! Thanks for reading and stopping by :)

I will tune in tomorrow for part two. Well written, thanks for sharing.

Thank you! And, thank you for reading! :)

Interesting how you made so much money at this. But the tax man always comes along! Already following.

Yes he does... I wish younger me would have paid more attention to that. Thanks for reading!

Great post, I had a similar experience around the same time. Now penny stocks are slow moving compared to crypto. ​😂

Yes they are! What happened with your experience?

I got into penny stocks around 2009 after selling my ebay business, and like you chased the newsletters and social promoting. Ihub message board was where I spent a lot of time. Had some success, but lost everything I was trading with. Although the initial "investment" wasn't very large.

Then I had a similar experience trying to trade Ethereum.., bye-bye 2200 ETH...​😳 That was a tough loss I am still not over, and ashamed to admit.
Oh well, I vowed to never trade again. I'm glad I found Steemit. I keep it powered up and locked up!​
😜

I was on ihub quite a bit too! What penny stocks did you trade? How funny would it be if we were trading the same ones?!

Man so many... one I remember quite a bit Was Liberty Star Uranium LBSR... I should look up the rest.

Do you remember Spongetech? I remember LBSR btw, Awesomepennystocks. ;)

Nice story, can't wait for the next post!

Thank you!

Great post as always and I enjoy these type posts in particular, Thank You!
I got sold on trading some penny stocks in my 20's. It was a lot of fun for a few months then my cockiness got the better of me and I washed away my profits and most of my initial investment. After that I just kept focus on my normal/boring strategy, writing covered calls on low PE, high dividend stocks at the like Avon Product, Westinghouse, etc...... Very boring but much safer.
Look forward to your to be continued.....

That is a great strategy and one to use once you have money... for my young self I was just trying to grow what little I had :)

It's not near as fun of a strategy thought. When I was 22 I got my annual bonus of $6,700. from my job and thought I knew what I was doing when I bought calls on $250,000. worth of Tandy expecting it to do what it had done the golden quarter in the past. Lost it all :-( for being a greedy cocky preppy. Good thing I didn't have a wife to answer to yet.

Nice piece, really looking forward to the next part because your story is quite similar to what happened to me in the 3rd quarter of 2016, made a lot in a short period but lost it all in a blink, taking risks could be crazy at times.

Yes it can... What happened with you? What is your story?

Great story! Absolutely love the stories like this.
Looking forward to next part :D

Thank you, hopefully it does not disappoint :)

Great article, I'm looking forward to part 2!

Looking forward to reading about the but....