Piranha Options Trading

It was many years before I would attempt stock trading again. In the fall of 2018 the market took a turn and I saw an opportunity to get back in. This time I would be more careful and not repeat my earlier experiences. However, I just couldn’t seem to time the market right. I always seem to get in late and out to early, never making any money.   This year, around March of 2019, I was sharing my story with a dear friend.  As we talked, he shared that he too was an avid investor/trader.  The only difference was that he was winning. About 80% of his trades made money, and he could repeat it almost every week.  He said” That most traders are like sharks, trying to take huge bites.  He suggested that I should be more like a piranha.  Piranha take small bites, and keep taking bites until they consume the entire thing.  He assured me that this was indeed  A Better Way To Play the Game.

I have always considered myself a “savvy” investor. However, my track record would likely paint a completely different picture. I am the guy that turned $3,000 into $300 then back to $3000 and then down to $100 in a single day. I can even remember losing several thousand dollars in matter of minutes, when I got in the trade as everyone that had a brain was getting out. Now, not every trade was a bad. There were many great trades. Its the wins that kept me playing the game. It is a great feeling to win! In fact, my best deal ever was trading American Airlines stock after they filed bankruptcy in 2011. I purchased shares for 25 cents, and in just a few months, the stock soared. I mean took off like a rocket. My initial $187 dollar investment had grown to over $4,000 dollars! Eureka!! I think I told everybody I knew how great I was at investing! I had learned how to win and I was going to turn my $4,000 win into $40,000 or at least that was the plan. As best I could figure, I had accidentally stumbled across an incredible winning strategy! Since, I made out like a bandit trading stock in a bankrupt airline, I figured that it would work for other companies going through bankruptcy. I guess that’s just the way my brain is wired. If the strategy works once, it should work again….. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. Buying stock in bankrupt companies turned out to be a terrible plan! Over the next few months I would go on to lose everything I gained and was down to a mere $87 dollars. I was broken in spirit and I had broken the bank. Although I didn’t make any money, I did learn that a poor trading strategy will eventually produce a poor man.