MY STORY CONTINUED

I began funding my account by purchasing stocks in companies I was watching.  This lead to my total investment on 7/15/2019 - $698.96. 

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At this point, I was buying penny stocks (Typically, companies whose price is under $5 a share), trying to catch something that would grow quickly.  Alas, I never had the patience to hold things long enough, nor did I have enough money to see any real growth...

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A friend purchased The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham for me in January of 2019, which taught me about the ins-and-outs of value investing (If you have $500,000 sitting in a drawer).  The main takeaway was that the Stock Market is designed to make rich people richer, not the "average retail investor," but we can use that understanding to make money. 

Between July and September of 2019, I continued adding shares into my account.  I was still buying shares, those amazing penny stocks, which you will see get me exactly no where.

By September 9th, 2019 I had accumulated a total of $2,527.50.  At this point, I was "trying" to accumulate some dividend stocks.  If I was going to hold them, I may as well get dividends, right?

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Turns out that I do not have the patience for the "Sit and Hold" method while holding such small sums of penny stocks.  I kept selling and buying, only for the stocks to grow after I had sold them.

I was doing something wrong, but was not sure what it was, so I began looking into leverage, which led to options, which led to YouTube... way too much YouTube.

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By October 11th, 2019 I had effectively moved my money around, wahoo, and apparently I had decided on less diversification.

I spent the next month watching what felt like every options video on Youtube, but still felt very unsure of how it all worked together.

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Through my research, I discovered that buying a call was a "relatively" safe way to dip my toes into options (Please see the Options Strategies Section).  Essentially, when you are buying a call, you are buying the right to call away (Buy) 100 shares of stock from another person (A real person) at a certain price, on a certain date.

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If the stock does not reach that certain price (Strike Price), you lose whatever you paid for that option to buy.  I decided to buy 4x $1 calls in FuelCell (FCEL) on December 19th, 2019 that expired (Strike Price Date) on 4/17/2020 for $25 each, $100 at risk.

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FuelCell decided to go on a Holiday/New Year run and I sold the options on January 3rd, 2020 for $105 each, or $420 total.  

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I had made about $200 in my entire first year trading stocks. 

I was shocked I was able to make more on one option, in just over a few days, than an entire year trading?

 That was it, I was hooked.