Everyone is talking about getting rich quickly nowadays; if you are not a billionaire at age 19, you are a failure; if you don’t own a Ferrari and broadcast shitty cheap ads boasting about your Wealth on YouTube, you are nothing.
Today I woke up with a heavy hangover; my girlfriend and I were celebrating yesterday. We hit several pubs, clubs and Bars in Cagliari before realizing we were pub crawling (Again). What we were celebrating, I don’t know. Let’s say it was just for existing: a hard job indeed! That has become our mantra since we met, and it is the only moment in my life when I feel good and don’t think about any other bullshit happening in my life: just me and her. It was as if my brain went into letargo.
Today my letargo finished at 11:30 am when I checked my emails, my usual morning routine. I hate it! Whenever I scroll through my inbox I squeeze my eyes, begging for nothing to destabilize my (now) sane lifestyle. That inbox traumatized me in the past with Covid-19 regulations, a couple of family losses, thousands of unsuccessful job applications and few job losses. Gosh, I was relieved to find out I just got junk marketing, but wait! What’s that?!
Our x3 Shopify leverage fund (ETF) has been closed, and your shares were liquidated at an average price of $0.00001.
I locked my phone and resumed sleeping, waiting to wake up from that nightmare. Nope, Pavlo! Smack on your face; here, reality check comes! I went downstairs, turned on my Kettle, and as I poured the boiling water on my teabag, my face started losing colour as the water was taking it. I felt like that tea sucked the soul out of me, or at least what was left in it.
“Dad, I just lost $46,832 of my life savings! The fund went to 0.” he went out murmuring something. He wasn’t angry nor disappointed; he knew I was careful about my finances, as I have always been. It wasn’t a lack of quality decision-making, and he knew that well. When I ran my portfolio in London, I updated him monthly and shared my investment strategy; he would just Mmm mm at me knowing I knew what I was dealing with.
I invested 30% in a Vanguard account with an average 4–6% annual yield and speculated the rest in leveraged ETFs (I was still young and could take the risk). I made 500% circa in 3 months; call it luck or whatever you want, but one thing it wasn’t: experience. I got that ROI from holding x3 Tesla and Nvida for those three months. I invested all my savings back then (£11,843) and turned it into almost $60k.
Before Christmas 2021, I decided to make my last (not so) speculative investment. Everyone was forecasting record spending online, and e-commerce would have been the most profitable industry as covid kept people away from offline shops. I got my strategy now, I put my 70% (with all my profits) into x3 Shopify ETF, and that’s what I did, left the money there and never checked for months.
That Christmas and New Year were one of the best for e-commerce indeed! People could not stop spending, catching up on the festivities missed the previous year. Everyone was talking about how much money they made running their little Christmas online shop on Shopify, but the financial news differ. Shopify didn’t flinch, and many experts now spoke.
The stock market doesn’t mirror the company’s wealth; they do not move together! Said expert A.
It takes some time before a trend can tune with the company’s balance sheet! Said expert B.
I kept holding convinced of my researched and calculated choice. This time was different, not like the risks I took with Tesla and Nvida! Back then, I was just a careless amateur; now, I am a studied amateur. What can go wrong, right? The war in Ukraine started two months later, and before I even heard the news, my x3 Shopify ETF was down 35% in less than a day. All the markets were down, so I didn’t care much, but leverage was not like investing in the normal market; if it hits 0, you get liquidated, and the fund closes.
That last calculated, studied, researched, risky decision was supposed to be rational! How come my most spontaneous and careless investment decisions fruit me more than this one? This didn’t make any sense! Now, with a 3WW in our backyard, I come to realize that the world is not rational at all, and it doesn’t compromise on anything. Study, research, improve and grow; it won’t matter what you do. This game is rigged, we live in a fucking Casino, and the outcome doesn’t depend on you. It never did, and it will never will.
Five years of hard work were ruined in one hour. Welcome to life, my friend.
I can’t say I haven’t been living an eventful and chaotic life. So what does a broke person do? Becomes a writer.