Journal of a Professional Irish Gambler

Yes in Feb 1999 I bought 1920  AMZN at 52 AND the next days sold at 64. Topped at 110 in April l999. Fell 65% to 44 in August 1999.  Rose 110% to 107 in Feb 2000. I thought I was a genius in Feb 1999 and would make money easily this way. I did not realise I could have picked anything as the tech sector was in the mid cycle of the most amazing two year bubble bubble which started 1 year earlier and ended 1 year later in March 2000 when it fell 30% in one month and came crashing down 100% to 1998 levels again. It crashed to 7 dollars per share by Nov 2001. Within 18 months of March 2000 there was four 10-30% false upwards corrections. This would have been Great for the person whose great strategy was to surf it down for 2 years from the top, shorting another 30% of FF with every 25%  correction back up. Long in bonds prices would have been a less emotional ride and a great strategy too.  They doubled in price in 2 years. Amazon AMZN temporarily topped in e...

Why was I not more positive and did not bet on growth and inflated stocks spiked by easy cheap credit and devalued currencies? Should I change and trade QQQS QQQ between the M200 lines or not that is the question In October 2015........... I betted on QQQS,  a triple ETF short on the Nasdaq and two months later I was on holidays waiting for my Haitian lover to arrive at my place in Santo Domingo, and I got really scared I was on the wrong side of the bet. From the balcony I pressed the button to sell all and save myself from an embarassing jump to the upside in the Nasdaq. One week later it started to severly drop not rise, it dropped and dropped and dropped and I did nothing even though I was a lover of shorting it. I would have gained thirty thousand in a month if I had not given into my fear of being stabbed like a knife in the back by long black swan upside swinging. But when it reached below the low end of the 200 moving average, my fear came through, and it rose sharp...

" 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...

I knew it. I have been following these for 6 years. But I shorted SINA and PCLN 4 weeks too early in June and was pushed by my 10% cover call. I have made a loss. And now sit on the sidelines as I see my forced out of bet go in the money by 5%, bummer man!!! Was it the right decision to have this kind of exit decision? Was it onsistent with my list? Did it fall or rise in the next years like in Aug 2012 or Aug 2013 ^IXIC Technical Analysis | NASDAQ Composite Stock - Yahoo! Finance

Shorted EXM - Bought NTES CTSH MSFT NITE I will wait 4 years for my favorite sexy stocks to walk back my way before I super snap it up like a true David Bailey. I myself feel lost again. I should be doing something about the sunchild program. I may find a hospital or charity for children in Madrid to appease my need to give. I should have bought today $100,000 worth of shares in RIMM or EXM. I will do it Monday afternoon instead. I should be calling Yaya my soul mate everyday but I am afraid to become lonely hearing her voice. I feel I am not good for her and her mental state. I need to put buy limits on RIMM and EXM and Yahoo. I feel I will lose Yaya and her magical companionship. I fear I will be yet another boyfriend left in another country feeling sorry for himself, just like the one she left in Chile. Nasdaq dropped one percent yesterday but my portfolio has gone up twenty per cent thank to a long gamble position I put on a 100 % leverage $233000 bet on EXM at 21 dolla...

Anything that contradicts experience and logic in the stock market for me should be abandoned. Let it be so. I have closed my position in AMZN and RFMD because of this and I have held on to SNDK for another two months.

I have sold out of RIMM at 56. I shorted it from 78 down to 56. Yeh baby. Let it affect you. However, I am losing twelve hundred dollars on CTSH already this week even though it reported record profits and even though NASDAQ has gone up forty points. What is going on? THat´s it. Enough of this addiction to feeling a loser. I don´t need it. I will sell CTSH and concencentrate on milking RIMM when it gets to 68 or 74 I would like to short it at again.

I am still negative on American indexes for the next two years so I will be more inclined to bet all of my porotfolio on weak fishes than strong salmons. However if there is more profit on a weekly basis with a long position than a short position then I will go take the opposite stance. It is only logical and I have to get better at mathematical logic if I am to succeed. I failed miserably at this subject in university and I am determined to not fail again but rather be addicted to a succesful mathematical logic in my investment gambles. Ireland lost last night and RIMM has gone up to 65.5 from 63 today. This is not good news but I am not going to let the feeling of failure affect me more than any success.

I am scared by what may happen this evening. I am short all my portfolio on RIMM and they are about to announce after market cloe their results for this quarter. By tomorrow I could be a lot poorer or a lot richer on paper. But all my indicators tell me I am right to be shorton the market. The question is , ´have I picked the right stock to short?´ Whatever happens I will remember to let the feeling of success affect me more than any feeling of failure. I am becoming less and less addicted to the adrenaline of a failure. RIMM has tanked fifteen per cent. I am successful. I am in the money. Despite NASDAQ going up last week RIMM went down. I have had a great week. I want the adrenaline buzz of this success to last and last and last. I love it. I am becoming addicted to success. I want more success. I want to short it again and again. If Nasdaq dips down below the fifty day moving average again. I will double up my bet and short RIMM again for six weeks. If Nasdaq rises I will go ...

My stocks are going up. IACI and EBAY are in the money, AMZN is 15% down and SYMC is 5% above what I bought it at even though my cover has taken me out of it two weeks ago. My faith in my trend picking is restored, my point of going long seems always out by a month and my cover strategy seriously questionable although I never did get burnt by AAPL or INSP. I won a killer pool competition last night in the Polar Bar and pocketed a sweet little 20 pounds.

SYMC is not getting out of jail as quickly as I hoped. I am feeling less confident about saving my bacon on this one. A week has gone by and it is still hovering 75 cents above my cover call. There has got to be a less riskier way to to lose 8000 dollars. I don't like the fact that I am in four shares and losing in all of them. I normally only concentrate on one. But somehow my strategy has taken into diversification. They say this limits risk but I do not know everyday how much I am actually down without logging in to my account. That means I have to put in a cover stop on four shares. Even if I cover SYMC automatically I will still have three shares still open to the downside. They will represent seventy per cent of my portfolio and still a major risk to more large losses.

Which top stock is heading for their 4th dip in 4 months? I feel these are ready for reverse throws up, SYMC, INSP and IACI. They are touching their 50 day or 200 day moving averages. I will invest 150% of my portfolio for four weeks, the second week in May and then short the same stock 100% or a weak stock that is hitting its 50d or 200d moving average.

I am afraid I am going to be down thousands by the end of today. But still, I have bought 1500 shares in NTES a Chinese net stock. But if Sina's results from yesterday were bad then I am at risk of losing loads. It is the risk I have chosen to take today because I know the direction of the indices for the next two years and I have bought on a six week correction. Fingers crossed you crazy gambling bastard. This is NTES. Sina nose dives on news that their revenue will be cut in the future because of the Chinese government banning all text messages to mobile phones. But they had record forth quarter profit. Despite this they loss thirty per cent in the morning to recover being down only fifteen per cent at the end of the day. My shares in NITE dived too but recovered to where I bought them at. Tomorrow I will sell them if they do not get off to a hot start. I sold my NITE. Just in time because by the end of the day they were down five per cent.  I am gutted my favorite internati...

Here I am in La Manga Spain in June 2005. I bought $16000 of AMZN at 38 in February 2005 and sold them now in June 2005 at 35 at 10% loss which seems like a good move at the time but over next six months they went up 20%. And two years later had gone up 100%.  And 13 years later had gone up 5000% meaning my investment would have been become 840,000 or  63,000 a year profit Jesus now with all this cash, I don´t know whether to do nothing tomorrow on the stock market or go all in. I want to bet on NTES and CTSH but I am scared after seeing Amazon tank 20% last week after weak results. What if that happens to NTES or CTSH if I bet 40,000. I will be down at least eight thousand dollars or sixteen thousand if I use leverage. If I don´t bet, I will probably miss my last opportunity for a a big profit this quarter. Should I wait for another three months or gamble. If I am wrong I will wait a month and then get out like I should have done with EXM which shot through the roof when...

The pick up truck swerved to stop from running me into the tarmac of the hot afternoon. At this moment, I am not the usual happy go lucky Irishman that everyone knows me as. Instead, I am walking the streets of Guadalajara Mexico numb to the outside world, in a daze, just muttering to myself. All I can think is, that I am a truly worthless individual, that I am stupid, that I am a sucker, that I am a fool, that I am an eejit, that I am really just another gambling addict and I really don't care if I die right here and now. But let's go back a day! I get up and log on to my computer and my internet stock broker account. Financial news on the internet centres around a China/US trade agreement break through. One click to an internet news provider and the word on Wall St is that China Prosper, a Hong Kong construction company, is said to be one of the main beneficiaries of the breakthrough. Luckily, they say, it's shares are also listed on the reputable stock exchange in Ne...