Introduction to Destruction…

In March 2021, I was nearing the completion of my Master of Arts in Teaching. I was halfway through my student teaching experience, on a leave of absence from work, and not contributing any money to my household. I was also about to discover that my fiancée was pregnant. To say it was a fraught time is an understatement, and on top of all of that, I made a decision to throw myself headfirst into the stock market, a topic about which I was woefully under-informed.

It started, I imagine, like a lot of these things start, with a stock tip from a friend. A few weeks prior, GameStop, a brick and mortar video game retailer, had seen its stock price skyrocket, and AMC, the largest chain of movie theaters in the world, was going to do the same, he said. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I believed in his pitch enough to throw a thousand dollars at it. Maybe I could double it and make enough to take my fiancée on a decent vacation, I thought. As the ticker started to rise, so did my excitement. By the start of June 2021, I was in for nearly $7,000 with an average cost of $11 per share. I still had faith in the play.

On June 2nd, the price reached a peak of $72.62. My roughly $7,000 investment was would have earned me over $37,000 (before Uncle Sam could have his say in the matter). I say “would have” because I never sold. I graduated with my Master’s degree and held. The pandemic continued to rage and I held. My son was born, and while I held him for the first time I continued to hold my shares.

Today, just over a year from that date, I still have not sold a single one. My investment was, as recently as May, actually losing about $800. Today it has earned roughly $900. I still have no solid plan as to when I am going to sell. I don’t look at it as “losing” what amounted to a year’s salary. I look at it as holding out for justice to prevail and fraud to be punished. My journey in the stock market began with AMC, but that was only an introduction. I had a lot to learn about how the market works, how the market is supposed to work, and how to earn money within the confines of an obviously broken and largely fraudulent system.

I tell you this story so that you understand the mentality required to trade effectively. It was not won easily, I promise. Plenty of days I wanted to pack it in and give up; just take whatever I had left and walk away. Removing emotion from trading is absolutely crucial, but how is one to do that with thousands upon thousands of real dollars at stake? That’s what we are here to discuss.

Welcome to the Trade Brigade.

Let’s get started.