Stonks (2021)

I step into an Uber on Thursday, January the 28th. It's around 8AM. Robinhood has just banned trading of $GME and a bunch of other meme stocks. When we get to a stoplight, my Uber driver switches away from the Uber app on his console-mounted iPhone and gets on Robinhood.

It's 2021 and everyone is trading.

Long before the Gamestop saga though, I had decided to spend more time investing in the public markets this year. For too many years in my 20s, I had just let money sit idly in a bank account. I've been averse to trading stocks mostly because I believed it was rather stressful. Nightmares of missing out on some major news and the stock just tanking. But it's 2021 and stonks only go up these days.

I also kicked myself for missing out on the incredible bull run from March 2020 onward, a period during which I didn't have a full time job and sufficient time to really do the research. Not that I had no money invested during this time, of course. I did. It was just minuscule amounts.

And with that pittance, I made some really good picks. Tesla was one of them. Up 8X for me. Peleton was another. Bought in at $25 and sold at $32 before the first post-COVID earnings because I figured the numbers weren't going to live up to the hype. Peleton closed at $145 this evening (Feb 10, 2021). 6X returns in under a year. Oh boy.

In fact, 3 out of the 4 stocks I bought in 2020 all have returns in excess of 100%. In excess of 500%, actually. AMC was the third stock in this set, which I bought at $3 and sold at $5. During Gamestonk week, AMC hit a high of $19.90.

And the fourth stock that had more modest returns? Lemonade, the insurance company that IPO'ed last year. Up 85%.

Time to battle-test my beginner's luck with more skin in the game this year. Stay tuned. 🚀 🚀 🚀