Transcript
Speaker: So you're equating spirituality and... Oh, for sure. It's everything. that's good It's everything. Trading is the most spiritual thing because it reveals your flaws in about, for me, it was like a minute.
Speaker: You buy a stock and you're so sure it's going to go up and it doesn't. And in your heart, you're like, I know it's gonna. When you lost money on it, you get back into it or you lose the money on one trade and you get into another trade and you're like, the market owes me.
Speaker: The market owes you nothing. The market has no empathy for you.
Speaker: Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Upgrade. Pastor Joe here, ready to talk stocks today. i got my double shot of water right here. know, you always wonder, what are these people drinking? You know, if it's coffee, it's, you know, i watch Inside the NBA and they have those cups. And i'm like, they're definitely not drinking coffee at 1 a.m. You know, I was drinking coffee before, but now a shot of clean water to fire me up.
Speaker: We're talking about one of my favorite subjects, stocks, investing, trading. And what gives me the street cred to do that? Well...
Speaker: I started in the basement of a bank called Thompson McKinnon in 1986. I had just given my life over to God. I went from drug dealer to I got to get a life here.
Speaker: And I knew then that I needed to have a career. So I went to Wall Street, went to what was called back then an employment agency. I don't even know if they have in person employment agencies. I just told the guy I'm good with numbers. I need a job.
Speaker: So they gave me the job in the basement of Thompson McKinnon, which is some of you old timers will know what that is. EF Hutton, Thompson McKinnon. Anyway, I'm working in this thing called the vault.
Speaker: They literally lock you in there. Because that back then, for i want to introduce our production team. This is the perfect intro. We have our Gen Z-er, Stephen George.
Speaker: We got our millennial, ah Joe Atavai, my son. And ah so I get that job, and I'm counting stock. You know, 100,000 chairs, 300,000, all this kind of stuff. Numbers, numbers, numbers.
Speaker: I was good with numbers. So I got a job after that at a bank called New Bridge Securities, where I was in a in a group called Dividends, which was probably the most boring job of my life, but I had to work, you know? couldn't Couldn't sell drugs anymore, you know? And now I had to work for a week and get nothing.
Speaker: But I had to do the right thing because Proverbs 28, 20 says, the faithful man shall abound with blessings. That's one of my favorite all-time scriptures. Remember it, sear it into your heart.
Speaker: Cause that's the only thing that kept me going is the faithful man shall abound with blessings. Cause was making, you know, on one drug deal, I was making what I was making now in a month. So I had to just stick with faithful man abounds of blessings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: Next thing you know, I'm working at this job that I really don't like, but I got to do the right thing. And my friend, childhood friend, calls me and says, oh, we have a job on the trading floor. I'm like, I'll do anything but this.
Speaker: And I knew the trading floor was a place where people yelled and screamed, so I wanted to be part of that because yelling and screaming is kind of who I am. So I took the job. I worked for a guy who his next-door neighbor was Raquel Welch. I don't know. Do you guys even know who that is?
Speaker: No. Oh my gosh, guys. Anyway, anybody over 50 will know what I'm talking about. That was his neighbor, you know, real rich guy trading on the floor. We were doing hand signals by two, by a hundred, you know, all these different things. I'm learning these hand signals. I'm taking orders.
Speaker: Next thing you know, there's this other company that's looking for ah clerk. And somebody says, hey, you know, you'd be good at that. I go to Chicago. You're reading my book. Everything makes me prosperous. But somehow I got this job.
Speaker: It ended up being a company that was run by born-again Christians called CRT, Options Trading. I got into the options pit. And before you know it, I was a commodities trader. I was a full-fledged, on-the-floor trading business.
Speaker: I got to the point where I was doing so much trading on the floor that I was making money. I made this company like $7 million dollars in my first year, got a big bonus. Somebody else hired me.
Speaker: And then Saddam Hussein invades Iraq. I was trading energy. was trading in crude oil, natural gas, unleaded gasoline, heating oil.
Speaker: One day I just went in and I bought 100 lots. Saddam Hussein said it's gonna be the mother of all battles. Oil went up $3. I made $300,000 in about a minute. And that was pretty much the end of my trading career.
Speaker: I just never could bounce back after that. Because I made that easy money. Remember? Where's that scripture I wanted to share today? Proverbs 28, 22. He who hastens to be rich has an evil eye and does not consider that poverty will come upon him. And let me tell you something.
Speaker: Poverty came upon me like four or five times over the next 10 years. So finally in 2001, I got a job with a company called ICE, a job I didn't want to take because I wasn't trading anymore.
Speaker: And before you know it, that company went from 5 million valuation to like 100 billion. It's worth 100 billion about now if I would have stayed, but I left in 2008. I retired with a decent sum of money, enough where I could come and pastor the church because I don't get paid by the church, and pretty much with my real estate, which was in my last podcast I talked about, between those two things, I was pretty much able to live a decent life. Now, I did trade again during COVID. 2020 and 21, more than i made my whole career
Speaker: In 2020, I just took my iPad, sat on the couch because I couldn't go anywhere. And I just stole money from Gen Zers and millennials because they didn't know what they were doing. Anyway. That's crazy. It's really true.
Speaker: It's kind of true. But anyway, I got people in our church. I have friends all the time that you know, they look at my lifestyle and think, oh, I just want to do that. Or they look at somebody else's lifestyle or they hear about this person made all this money and everybody wants to do it.
Speaker: But also I can tell you of older guys in our church that I've had to console because they lost a lot of money. But I want to quickly tell you about four ways that people try to make money in the market.
Speaker: First one. is long-term investing. Like I know my son is doing right now. Dollar cost averaging, like you put a certain amount a month, $100, 150, 200, some people 500, whatever.
Speaker: Dollar cost averaging. In other words, every month you put money in the market, whether it's up or down, because nobody can time the market. That's a very diligent approach.
Speaker: Then you have swing trading, which is more like you do a trade in a stock you've done some diligence on you think it's gonna pop because of earnings or you look at the chart and the technicals are telling you it's gonna go up.
Speaker: Technicals is something we'll get into it in another time because we need to show you graphs and all that kind of stuff. This is a basic talk about trading. That swing trading is more like you put a trade on and you expect the stock to go up for three days, a week, even a couple months.
Speaker: Then we come down to the thing that everybody wants to do, and I'll show you why it's a bad idea in a moment, but everybody wants to be a day trader, right? Because they don't want to go to work. They don't want to get on a bus or a train. They want to sit in their house and make a lot of money. and average Actually, I did that in 2020.
Speaker: But that was a unique market and unique circumstances. And that's when you buy and sell in the same day. Finally, there's options, which I have to do a whole nother podcast on. I can't explain that.
Speaker: I'm an expert in options. I traded options for over 20 years. So there's almost nothing I don't know about options. And it's one of the things that I used during COVID to make a real good amount of money.
Speaker: But let me just break down these different kinds of trading and some data on it. And let's start with day trading. The thing that everybody wants to do.
Speaker: And every time I talk to somebody about I say this, only 5%, and I'm wrong because it's lower, it's 1% to 5% of Dane traders actually are profitable over time. 1% to 5%.
Speaker: It's like just because you get out on the basketball court and make couple threes doesn't mean you're going to be in the NBA, okay? The amount of athletes that make it a professional sports is really low.
Speaker: Same thing with day traders. Swing traders, it's a little better because you're you're allowing the stock to move or you're you're studying it a little more. You're not looking for a short-term quick hit dopamine shot.
Speaker: You're actually thinking about it a little bit. And that's more of what I do now. Swing traders, 10% to 25% win in the long term. As you notice, these odds are not very good, are they?
Speaker: Long-term investors, dollar cost averaging. Anybody who stayed in the market for over 20 years is up.
Speaker: I had been a day trader, swing trader my whole life. When I left Wall Street, except for COVID, I just became a long-term investor. And that has kept me going. Like, I still have the same amount of money I had started with, and I've spent a ton of it.
Speaker: So, and I do make smart decisions about where I leave my money. So the day trading reality is 95 or more percent of people that day trade lose money.
Speaker: Lose money. Lose money. And another thing day traders like to do is to buy options.
Speaker: What percent of it ah ah of options expire worthless? 90% or more expire worthless. So what does that mean?
Speaker: Well, you'll probably be better off selling options than buying them. And like I said, that's a whole nother thing we're going to talk about.
Speaker: Just to give you a few facts, this the S&P 500, if you don't know what that is, that's a gauge of 500 stocks in an index.
Speaker: And it's a pretty popular index. You have the Dow Jones Industrial Average. have the NASDAQ 100. You have the 500. If you put $1,000 in the S&P 500 20 years ago, you'd have approximately $8,000. how many times has gone up, guys? Eight times. 800%.
Speaker: twenty years ago you'd have approximately eight thousand dollars so how many times has it gone up guys eight times eight hundred percent If you bought a house in 2006 at a half million dollars, multiply that by eight, it will be worth $4 million dollars right now.
Speaker: Has your real estate performed that well? No. No. I bought my house for, what, $600? It is not worth $4.8 million right now.
Speaker: Now, if you look at my real estate video and rental properties, it's good. I mean, it's it's a good return. The S&B has been amazing.
Speaker: Now, look at this now. Look at Apple. Gosh, 20 years ago, if you put $1,000 in Apple, guys, here's your first question. If you put $1,000 in Apple 20 years ago, what do you guys think that would be worth today? we Approximately. We saw your notes.
Speaker: All right, everybody watching. and if you're watching, subscribe. But everybody watching. and would have guessed $40,000, $50,000. $130,000. was teaching inside the markets class around 2006. thousand
Speaker: i was teaching this inside the markets class around two thousand and six for people in the church and outside the church. I had more people coming into my ah to my market class than were coming to church.
Speaker: um And this young guy was there, and I remember he was like, I own this many Apple shares. I'm never going to sell them. And I thought, oh, what a, come on, kid.
Speaker: Take some profits. Well, he might be on a beach somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker: enjoying life eating crack crab right now because that was a wise decision how about amazon a thousand would be a hundred thousand dollars right now google a thousand thirty three thousand so not as much but google has really taken off lately so if you were comparing these numbers you might have thought of investing in google about a year ago because it's doubled Here's the point.
Speaker: Slow and steady and picking out good companies, right? So I've had money in indexes because they're slow and steady, but I've also had my money in stocks that, you know, when the Apple phone first came out, we should all bought a ton of Apple. It was so obvious, right?
Speaker: I mean, if I would have bought Amazon in 2000, if I would have bought Microsoft, I mean, could you imagine? If you were to put $1,000 in Microsoft back in the early 90s, it would be worth close to $1 million dollars now. So I'm just saying. And when you buy stocks, I mean, you don't have to repair anything. you know just You just watch it.
Speaker: And some of these stocks have dividends. You know, I've lived off dividends for the last 20 years. You can get 3% dividends. You can get 4% dividends. They have stocks that have 11% dividends. Now.
Speaker: What are dividends? It's ah instead of a company taking the profit and investing it back in the company, they give it back to the people that own the shares.
Speaker: So usually they're 2% or 3%.
Speaker: You know, um but like I said, there's some stocks that have a 10% dividend. Listen, rule of thumb, if you make $7,000 a year um on your capital, you're doing great.
Speaker: Because what happens after 10 years of 7% interest? Does anybody know the rule of 70? No.
Speaker: Ah, I didn't put in the notes so you guys don't know. If you have $100,000, and you get 7% a year for 10 years, that's $200,000. It doubles.
Speaker: Doubling is incredible, everybody. So if you start, say, with $500,000, and after 10 years it doubles, you have a million. And another 10 years you have 2 million.
Speaker: Another 10 years you have 4 million.
Speaker: This is called compound, compound you know? Amazing. It's amazing. What if you have, what if you're making 14% year on your money?
Speaker: Every five years it doubles. Do the math after a little bit. Your mind will explode. Do you know the Albert Einstein quote? What? Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. ah Smart guy Albert Einstein. Smart guy You know, so now
Speaker: and And when you get dividends, you can reinvest them. So I don't even know if when they're talking about Google and Apple, if they're taking that into consideration. My stock, ICE, that I bought, you know, they pay me a dividend every quarter. That's been great. So dividends are great, you know, but they get taxed.
Speaker: So
Speaker: these are the things, you know, you Slow and steady, right? Evil eye. The Bible calls it an evil eye. It means you're too focused on trying to make money quick.
Speaker: People that are so focused on making money quick never make money.
Speaker: It's just a fact. you know you i I lived it. When I sit back and make wise, well-thought-out decisions, I do well.
Speaker: You know that scripture says that if you have an evil eye trying to get rich quick that you'll have broken walls as a city. you know like You're easily influenced. And that's what happened to me many times.
Speaker: Just easily influenced to make impulsive decisions. And I still do it once in a while. The same way, you know, during COVID when I was using options, the amount of fear that was going on during the COVID, I was like, oh, my God, they are going to blow these option premiums out. And I want to I'm going to sell them.
Speaker: I'm going to collect that money. And that's what I did. I was basically selling insurance on the end of the world because people were betting that, you know, the stock market was going to go to zero. And when it dipped from like 30,000 to 20, right when it was about 20,000, I started selling puts because I said, this is the world's not going to end.
Speaker: Okay. And if it does, guess what? We'll all be broke. So you make decisions like that, you know, What would you say are the major indicators to find a good company, a good stock?
Speaker: I mean, one thing and know you've always taught me and I've done it three times to this point. And that's something you've taught me to avoid. And I've still done it three times and lost some money doing it.
Speaker: Stock tip. Is when everyone's buying and people I know who have no wherewithal when it comes to trading are like, buy it, buy it, buy it. It's going to be, you know, especially when it comes to crypto.
Speaker: There's like three different times where people were hyping me up and I bought and then I lost some money. Yeah. It's the old stock tip thing, right? You know what they used to say on Wall Street? When the shoeshine guy, now we used to have shoeshine guys. i don't have that anymore. When the shoeshine guy tells you there's a stock to buy, you know it's a bad time in the market because everybody's already bought in, right?
Speaker: And then when you finally get it, that's they are selling it, you know, almost every time. And I know so many people my age have done that. Last in, last out.
Speaker: First in, first out is the best. Last in, last out. So how do you be one of those people that gets in on the ground floor? Due diligence, studying. You've seen it happen somewhere else. You think it's gonna happen here.
Speaker: The people that are looking for crypto, it's the people that are looking at it every day and they get the first news and they get in. i mean, during COVID, I made like a
Speaker: I'll say it. I made a quick 800 grand just in in in crypto and I lost it all. Wow. Like I just couldn't pay attention to it because I was doing other things.
Speaker: So stupidly, i just left. Like i wasn't I wasn't managing it. I just hit those quick hits like everybody else had And I know people... Now, I can afford that because i it was nothing. Like, it was like I didn't put in 800. I built something very small into that. So when I got out up 100, I was okay.
Speaker: But there were other people that were in, and they used to have this thing. They were called diamond hands. They would always say diamond hands. Or H-O-D-O, HODL, hold on for dear life. These are like millennial terms, right?
Speaker: Like diamond hands, like I'm never going to lick. I go, those diamond hands going to turn to charcoal. You need to take a profit. Because somebody will buy ah ah a crypto coin for $1 and it goes to $30. And they're like, nope, I'm never selling it. And now it's worth $0.03.
Speaker: I'm like, sell it. You know what? Sell a third. If it goes down to $10, you could buy it back, right? One of the best traders I've ever known...
Speaker: And it sticks in my head. He said, when you make a nice profit, sell a third. It takes the pressure off, right? You've taken some profit. And another really wise thing is taking profits never hurt you.
Speaker: Yeah. That's like one of my wife's proverbs, right? It's like so obvious. Why think that is? People want to make money and then the profit presents itself. Because you think it's going higher.
Speaker: Everyone wants to hit a home run. Can i raise my hand? I've done it so many times. Get on first base. You don't need to hit a home run every time the Quick story. When I was at the height of my crazy commodity trading, my account was up about $800,000, right? in one day, I made million, dollars right? up like million.
Speaker: that was october first october thirty first My account was down $700,000.
Speaker: I got so lax. I got so just, so then they put me back in the pit, a different pit that was really moving. And I, I made back like 2 million, but you know, when I got the bonus to buy our house, but then after that, I was just losing money all the time. One time I was trading for this hedge fund.
Speaker: I was up $800,000 in like two weeks. They were like, God, we hired this superstar, this golden boy. They always called me the golden boy, but I ended up being copper in the end. And one day I was home. i had breakfast with my dad. He was still alive. And I went home and it was freezing out. And I thought, oh, natural gas is going to go up. And I got long.
Speaker: By the end of that day, $800,000 or $900,000 profit was a negative i had to go to work that monday
Speaker: That was last my my last Monday at work, by the way. Oh, wow. So that's how it happens. You know, you just get in the spiral and you can't think straight.
Speaker: the wall Like the scripture says, your wall is broken down. you You know, as soon as you leave those principles that you know are right, it's the flesh.
Speaker: So you're equating spirituality and... Oh, for sure. It's everything. That's good. It's everything. Trading is the most spiritual thing because it reveals your flaws in about, for me, it was like a minute.
Speaker: Hmm. Hmm. Like right now, your pride is right before a fall. You think the market's going up just because you think it should go up. because you And then here's another mistake people make. Well, let's get into, should we get into the three things to avoid when it comes to trading?
Speaker: Should we get into that right now? Yeah, we should. Let's do it. Don't be a day trader. Because only 1% to 5% of them make it. Unless you are a stud at it.
Speaker: Unless you've been doing it and you're just making money. Don't be a day trader. Just don't do it. Fair enough. It will take up all your time.
Speaker: Get a day job. I tell these people. People go, I made this much. I go, don't quit your day job. Because people think just because they made a lot on one trade or something, now they can do this every day.
Speaker: It is so difficult. It is so stressful. That year that I went back to day trading, it did make a lot of money because of COVID. That was a market that anybody, well, a lot of people could have made money. And a lot of people did, but a lot of them lost it.
Speaker: I took it and bought real estate, which was the best thing I ever did. But... What's my point? What is my point about day trading? What was I saying? Don't do it. Yeah, don't do it. That's the one. Don't quit your day job. I had a heart attack at the end of that year. oh yeah.
Speaker: had a heart attack from all that stress. yeah Day trading is stressful. You know, and a lot of people do it from home. They got a wife and kids. Here's another thing about day trading, and it's so true. It's like if you have a bad day, it can really like ruin your day.
Speaker: You know, I would come home and my kids were scared of me because they didn't know. Did he have a good day? Did he have a bad day? You know, and people struggle with that now.
Speaker: And most of the people that do day trade, you just see them, they just lose everything. And they're like, how did I get here? It's very depressing. um So I would say, unless you have that kind of personality, where whether you lost or made money, you're fine.
Speaker: If you play pickup basketball and you lose and you want to beat everybody up, don't be a day trader. Good advice. And that was me.
Speaker: So, you know, you got to know your personality. You got know your limitations. It is very spiritual. It really is. You'll see your flaws, you know?
Speaker: And, you know, one of the things is pride comes before a fall, right? When you're investing, you have to be able to say you're wrong.
Speaker: If you can never say you're wrong, if your pride is strong, you will fall. Because there's been times you buy a stock and you're so sure it's going to go up and it doesn't. And in your heart, you're like, I know it's gonna.
Speaker: I know it's gonna. And then you get to when you lost money on it, you get back into it or you lose money on one trade and you get into another trade and you're like, the market owes me.
Speaker: The market owes you nothing. The market has no Empathy for you. Hey everybody. The mission of the upgrade is simple.
Speaker: Upgrade your life in every area. In relationships, in purpose, in finances, and most of all, in your walk with God. Because you're not broken. You're just due for an upgrade.
Speaker: So hit the subscribe button right now and share it with a friend or a relative and let's build this thing together. And if you want to go deeper, i have two books to share with you.
Speaker: The first one is Everything Makes Me Prosperous. It's the memoir of my life, my story of how I went from rock bottom to where I am today. Secondly, now this book is written with my ghost writer, who's not a ghost anymore, Stephen George.
Speaker: It's about the miracle babies of Grace Church. Couples who were told they couldn't conceive, but through consistent prayer, miracles were born. If you want to get a hold of these books, the links are in the description. And if you want to see us in person, come out to Grace Church of North Brunswick, New Jersey. I hope to see you there.
Speaker: Now back to the video. You know, so respect early on, yes, no respecter of persons. there Give me, come on, bring it. There's your scripture right there. It is no respecter people.
Speaker: When I was an auto mechanic, now i when I got arrested as a young man, they made me go to trade school. I became an auto mechanic.
Speaker: I got injured so many times. I got metal in my eye, different things. I remember this mechanic said to me, he goes, be very careful because cold, hard steel has no empathy and compassion for you.
Speaker: It has no emotion because you can get hurt. You know? And that's how the market is. The market doesn't care that you can't buy your kid's shoes and you can't bring home money for your wife to go shopping.
Speaker: The market doesn't care. It's like cold hard steel. And I had to deal with that over and over ah again. Remember that the market doesn't owe So...
Speaker: so Of course, we can get into things about emotion and FOMO, but I'm just giving you some other things. Those are obvious. Fear of missing out. Don't buy a stock that somebody told you or crypto.
Speaker: Fear of missing out. You got to do your due diligence, of course.
Speaker: Finally, don't do it in isolation. Because when you try to day trade or trade in isolation, you won't see the blind spot. Somebody else could point it out to you. That's why trading desks,
Speaker: Where people make money, you know, there's a bunch of traders in a room. So somebody can tell you, you didn't hear about this? You know, so, but now you can get information with chat and all that stuff. And I understand that. Even when I was trading on my iPad, I was on a text with two or three other people that were trading and we would pass stuff back and forth.
Speaker: Like if you do it on your own in isolation, you can make some really bad decisions on your own. People take their own lives because they're not talking to other people. Yeah, there's a proverb about that too. Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire. He breaks out against all sound judgment. in her age Is that 18-1?
Speaker: Yep, 18-1. It's ones one of my favorites. It's all sound judgment. Yes. Here's the thing that we struggle with, people that trade stocks and stuff. It's like, If you're afraid and you're not sure, just get out.
Speaker: You can always get back in. Some the best trades I ever made was I got out, cleared my head, and then realized, you know what? That was a good trade. I'm going to get back in.
Speaker: So say you're buying this stock and it's $12, $12, and it goes down to $11.70, and you're starting to get
Speaker: You know, and then next week, because I don't recommend day trading, and the next week it's down to 11.20, and you're just like, you know what? I don't feel comfortable. you just sell your position. And you just sit.
Speaker: And it doesn't go through 11. It kind of stays around 11.20. And nothing's changed fundamentally and technically about how you feel about this company. Well, you can get back in right now.
Speaker: If you get back in at 1150, like you'll be like, oh, well, it was 1120 and I got out. Who cares? If it's going to $20, it's going to $20. Like sitting back and just watching can be the best thing you ever do.
Speaker: Because you'll be able to see straight. Getting out of a fear and panic situation. If you're not comfortable, get out. You can always get back in. It's hard to let go.
Speaker: hard we always say don't get married to a stock you already got married to a woman why marry a stock now it's not always faithful it doesn't always do what you want it to do i'm not talking about wife i'm talking about stock ah I got more questions on indicators because a lot of people who are new to this are always just thinking, what should I buy? what should i How do I know what want to buy?
Speaker: And you keep bringing up that you're familiar with commodities. That's what you worked in. So that's what you trade because you're just familiar with it. I'm sure you trade other stuff. but No, I don't trade commodities anymore at all. No? No.
Speaker: Stocks are much safer and easier. But you can you could trade oil and gas through stocks, but know. do you Do you necessarily need to be well-versed in whatever in this?
Speaker: No. Okay. Because I have a story. I think of a, there's a friend of mine, a close friend of mine, who's a gamer and he builds PCs for other people. And somewhere around 2020, he was building a PC for the church and he was saying, oh, these NVIDIA chips, like these GPUs are so dang expensive.
Speaker: And I remember thinking to myself and he just kept saying, oh they're just going to keep going up They're just going keep going up. And I thought to myself, oh, someone should invest in that. Oh my God, why don't you tell me? And then me and Steven are looking at NVIDIA and he literally said, because he knows GPUs really well. He knows computers. He knows what was going up.
Speaker: And then i was thinking to myself just now, I mean, Stephen looked, if I were to just put $500 in 2020 into Nvidia, what was it, Steve? It would be like $20,000 now. yeah And I literally thought to myself at the time, and he knows nothing about trading.
Speaker: And i'm to my knowledge, he's never traded once. These are the kind of things I tell you, like the gu the kid with the Apple, he just said, this is, I mean, this is real. Like those are the things.
Speaker: So the things that you think, oh, that would be good in the future. Yes, I believe that. Yes. Like when all this AI just was starting to take off, I heard about quantum computing and there was this stock, QBTS.
Speaker: And I was able to leverage with options probably 40,000 shares. It was like $1.40. Went like $20. didn't stay it. went up to like twenty dollars i didn't stay with it I had a good idea and I knew it was a good idea, but I got impatient.
Speaker: You know, like when you bought, if you would have told me about Nvidia and it were, i would have hoped somebody would have said to me, yeah, give it some time. You know, like with the quantum stocks, I saw all the quantum stocks starting to go.
Speaker: just like the AI stocks are going now. So people are just buying anything that has ai in it. Some people are just naming their company's symbol with AI at the end. I mean, really, they're taking advantage of that.
Speaker: of course. Every news story now is, you know, CVS is going to use avi you know. AI to do their prescription, you know, like anything to get a boost to their stock. Cause as soon as you say, Hey, I now eventually that's, I know how do you balance out? Because I use AI a lot.
Speaker: We're thinking of that story with the, well, if you guys see something that's coming, cause once everybody knows about it, it's over. Well, not always. You could be halfway through. Or you could find, like, I found this chip stock, chip testing stock that isn't on anybody's radar. And, you know, so far, i've it's gone up about eightfold for me in six months.
Speaker: So maybe there's some kind of thing that they do with AI chips that no one's paying attention to. Like, for me, it was testing. And I just stumbled into it. I wasn't looking for it It was just a stock I owned that already.
Speaker: So. I got on your notes. i This is a really good question. I think we should hit this before we wrap up. Okay. First step. Just the first step. Someone watching this. What's the first step they can take if they have extra money on the side to invest?
Speaker: Okay. I would say do dollar cost averaging. I would say find a good financial advisor. If you feel comfortable about picking stocks, I would i would put i would definitely get one account where it's just dollar cost averaging.
Speaker: You're putting a certain amount of money every month in the market, right? And what if they're already doing that with their 401k? Okay. And they have money to... I would say do some due diligence, learn about stocks, ask questions.
Speaker: If you see an Nvidia, like you like put a little money in it, just dip your toe in, don't jump all the way in. See if you're comfortable, you know, buy a stock that, you know, you think is maybe undervalued, like maybe an Amazon or a,
Speaker: Google has some catching up to do or, you know, a bank or something somewhat safe, like a JP Morgan, or if you want to be a little more risky, a Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, buy a couple hundred shares or a hundred shares or 50 shares and just see how it feels.
Speaker: Just get used to looking at your statement and see if you can handle when you're down 500 or when you're up a thousand or whatever. Just... take ah you know Open up a Schwab or an E-Trade account. and just You can open up those accounts. and You can literally trade practice.
Speaker: Robinhood. Robinhood. There you go You guys know better. You can just practice for a month. Practice for a year. See if you're any good at this. And only invest what you are comfortable losing?
Speaker: Well, if you're buying a stock in a decent company, you're not you're most likely not going to lose everything. yeah Unless you do it on leverage. When you first invest, don't use leverage. Don't use margin.
Speaker: I don't want to teach what margin is right now. Let's do it. Yeah, look that up on AI. Yeah. All right, listen, everybody. Stop trading. No. Listen, the diligent shall be made rich.
Speaker: Don't have an eye that says, I got to make it all. You have time, hopefully. you know And if you feel like you don't have time, you shouldn't be risking. you know But if you're a Gen Z or millennial, you know you tip your toe and make sure you're in the market in some way, shape, or form.
Speaker: If you want to know more about real estate, which is, to me, a safer long-term investment, then just check my other podcast about real estate. We're going to about options. We're going to about all kinds of stuff.
Speaker: And if you have any questions, put in the comments. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. And thank thank you, Stephen and Joe, for your input. And remember, it's only up from here. It's going to get better.
Speaker: Your best is yet to come.
