First of all, I want to say that I am not a financial advisor or an expert and this blog is basically my opinion about the stock market. Now, here is my story!

I am from Vietnam. I came to USA to study abroad. One of the things that I really want to do when I come here is to buy stocks. After the first semester studying here, finally, I found myself a part-time job. It was great news! I got my SSN and opened an account on Robinhood. I was so excited, but, to be honest, I had little knowledge about investing at that time. My knowledge was what stocks were, and I “taught” myself by watching some stock trading videos on YouTube, which was totally useless! I did not know finance or accounting or any kind of fundamental analysis. I had with me 2 books about stocks at that time, which were “Market Wizards” by Jack D. Schwager and “How to Make Money in Stocks” by William J. O’Neil, and I did not finish reading any of those 2 books.

So the time I started was in the beginning February, which was prior to the moment COVID-19 hit the whole world. I deposited $100 to Robinhood. The first stock I bought was Softbank, which I bought based on my belief for its CEO Masayoshi Son. I also bought Virgin Galactic stock after it had crashed from its high $42. Basically, after that I was frustrated and sold everything. Then, I read some article on Investopedia about inverse ETFs. I bought one and recovered my small losses.

After these unfortunate events, I pushed myself to do more research. I tried to learn the CANSLIM strategy from the book “How to Make Money in Stocks”. Then, I bought $DELL and $YUMC. I made some profits. I became more confident and deposited more to my account. During that time, I made about $300 when the market hit all-time high. I got $AMD in my portfolio at that time, and it also rose to all-time high. I was a genius, I thought.

Then, things started to turn around. I started to try stock options. I got lucky when I bought puts on $INO. I made a great sum from it. After that, the market stopped going up and started correcting itself, which was around beginning of September. I thought it was temporary and bought more shares on $XLK. It continued to go down. CNBC said it was the tech sell-off! Then, I sold all $XLK, which was basically erasing all my profit since I bought it during the summer. Not only that, I started to be aggressive on my account. I bought puts that were following no rules or disciplines. Since, I washed all my profits that I gained from the market recovery. Here’s the picture of my portfolio for you guys to see.