Journal of a Professional Irish Gambler

" The wise investor recognizes that success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions using bets."   - JOHN  TEMPLETON " THERE’S NO FREE LUNCH " Never invest in an initial public offering (IPO) to “save” the commission. That commission is built into the price of the stock.  DO NOT BE FEARFUL OR NEGATIVE TOO OFTEN. For 100 years optimists have carried the day in U.S. stocks.  Even in the dark ’70s, many professional money managers and many individual investors too  made money in stocks,  especially those of smaller companies  OUTPERFORMING THE MARKET IS A DIFFICULT TASK BEGIN WITH A MEDITATION - LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. Forgive yourself for your errors. DON’T PANIC. Don’t rush to sell the next day.  The time to sell is before the crash, not after.  Instead, study your portfolio.  If you didn’t own these stocks now,  would you buy them after the market crash? AGGRESSIVELY M...

Now to get my Irish pension pot out of the 50/50 Euro and US stocks fund. I will put it into a so called Euro cash fund until I can find a way to get them into GBP or CHF or Hargreaves. I want to do this in case a great or monster unknown black swan comes out of no where like Japan, Spain or Italy to hammer the euro even more than the 25% already beaten down. Russia deserves better long investment too given its low debt to GDP. Meanwhile I played on pokerstars for the first time in two years I finished in 3rd place in a 30 pound tourney and won 230 (eliminated at hand #135767801039). There were 120 hands played and saw flop: - 6 times out of 21 while in small blind (29%) - 9 times out of 22 while in big blind (41%) - 22 times out of 77 in other positions (29%) - a total of 37 times out of 120 (31%) Pots won at showdown - 12 out of 18 (67%) Pots won without showdown - 14 And I played in PokerStars Tournament #1232252470 I finished in 8th place (eli...

This week, May 2015, I have put in an order to move almost half of my net worth out of Passive Long Euro Bonds into 50-50 Global Equities. This is 80% my pension funds. If it increases 5% over the next five months I will double it up. If it decreases by the same I will look for another vehicle for my next two to five year strategy. Or move it to cash if a black swan seems imminent.  Europeans Dax shared tanked over 10 months actually from April 2015( eurobond reached its low bounced for 2 months then retraced lower a lot) to Feb to 2016 by 35%. Nasdaq only went down 8% in the same period. I have also with 10% of my net worth triple-shorted the Financial Stocks Index for the last three months purchazing FAZ. But this fund is down 7% since mid February. I am ready to pull the plug on them and go the other way within the next two weeks. I lost 5% on QID over two months which is a triple short ETF on the Nasdaq.  It is time to move all my pension contributions into on...