This Guy Turned $20K Into $2 Million (You Can, Too)

sometimes it's not what you invest in it's what you don't invest in and I only make one or two big trades a year and I think my story just proves that there's never a bad time to make a great investment I think that story is ever more important as we look forward to 2013 not knowing exactly which way the markets are going to take us and I actually made 25 turn twenty thousand to two million from 2007 to 2010 in the middle of the worst financial turmoil we've had in a country in decades and the way that I did it was just learning how to retrain my mind to identify game-changing things in real life that were having game-changing impacts on publicly traded companies and the trick here is to understand when you see something in your life that Wall Street hasn't picked up on yet and that's when you have an opportunity to make an information arbitrage investment now the moment that Wall Street starts talking about that thing that you picked up on days weeks or months earlier is when you exit the investment and that really is what my methodology is all about just living your life and learning how to see things that could correlate to investment opportunities on Wall Street I mean of course Chris the risk is is that you're not a very good picker if you will when it comes to picking trends I mean you might think that your Crocs are awesome and yes they you know they ended up doing all right but what happens if Wall Street never comes around I guess is what I'm saying what happens if the thing that you think is gonna be the next big thing just isn't okay so it's not what you think is the best next big thing it's what you notice around you it's what people are adapting to so for example a co-worker of mine last year came to me and she said Chris I know you're an investor I just read this book called The Hunger Games and all of my friends have read this book and I'm telling you if they ever make it into a movie it is going to be bigger than Harry Potter I thought she was nuts bigger than Harry Potter I never even heard of this book and I did a little bit of research and I found out that Lionsgate a company that had never had a blockbuster film was had actually slated to turn this book into a feature film now Lionsgate in the next six months doubled doubled as a stock right those sorts of stories happen all the time and Wall Street took many months to pick up on that story and it's not because I read Hunger Games I never even read the book as an investor I didn't care about Hunger Games I cared the fact that millions of kids were so passionate about this book which ultimately turned into a multi hundred million dollar film so Chris you start with twenty thousand you get it to two million the question is how do you size the position in other words you have your great idea let's go by Lionsgate let's say at that point you had to make the number easy a million dollars of capital do you buy half a million to buy a hundred thousand you put all me I mean how do you size these trades well it's well for me it was very simple I I essentially took roughly twenty to forty percent of my portfolio and poured it into the next trade now you can do that when you're only investing once or twice a year but I invest with conviction so I'm only making one or two investments a year when I find something it's material it's a big it's not just a trend it's a big game changing event that for whatever reason Wall Street has missed and over the eight or nine investments I made in that three-year period that were my big investments I think I maybe missed on one the other seven or eight all them were hits that generated for me triple digit returns in some case three four five hundred percent returns in a very short period of time all right now the million dollar question what do you like now well you know I don't have anything on the slate at this moment I will tell you this for me personally I think the advent of crowdfund investing in 2013 is bigger than anything I see in the stock market right now and because of the JOBS Act the crowdfunding exemption every single American will have the opportunity in 2013 to invest in startups the same way VCS and angels do today even if it's a small amount of money so we can leverage our own local knowledge the knowledge we have in our profession the hobbies that we have we can leverage that to invest in people in our own social networks that are starting the next big thing the next Facebook or the next store in our neighborhood that's a that's really big news for us I think it's the biggest thing to happen in decades to investing in American innovation so I'm really excited about that on the stock side I don't have anything at the moment I might be waiting eight or nine months to catch my next big investment but it's all about patience I say it's like the big wave surfer you know big wave surfers will wait for months and months and months for that big storm to come and they're waiting they're plotting and they're very patient and they travel wherever it is around the world to take that next big wave well I invest the same way it could be September of 2013 before I make my next big investment you have to be patient in the interim I'm just gonna continue to live my life read lots of magazines go to the movies go to restaurants observe the world around me and continue to hone my sense of critical observation and that's something that any single individual person can do you don't have a financial background to do that and when you see something game-changing if Wall Street hasn't picked up on it that's an opportunity to make a game-changing big trade all right you keep reading and I'll tell you what will make you a deal when you get your next big idea please come on and tell us we want to hear about it Chris kamila ops I I absolutely will

Channel: Bloomberg Originals

Views: 1,350,876

Keywords:

Id: MrEQFFfYFa0

Length: 5min 9sec (309 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 03 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/theoneandonlypatriot]

yeah guys all you have to do is find game changing once in a life investments and just go all in, it's really that simple you guys

[u/yaosio]

This is called survivorship bias. You can not turn $20,000 into $2,000,000 unless you are very lucky. It's like a lottery winner saying you should buy lottery tickets if you want to be rich.

[u/TheUltimateSalesman]

So invest in things you believe in. They have a name for that. It's called value investment.

[u/metajuice]

This kind of investment advice seems simple but often gets overlooked by those looking to make short term fast gains. It especially holds true in today’s market with algorithmic trading bots and AI, that high-frequency traders will lose to more often than not. As a small time investor you have a better chance to maximize your gains through infrequent, long term, and well researched investments

Edit: trading bots, not trading boys

[u/4827335772991]

Seto Kaiba did it faster

[u/cheapassgamersexy]

I have a friend who told everyone to invest in Nvidia at $7 in 2008 after the crash. He sold the day it hit $70. He also bought Tesla at $32 in 2012 but sold when it hit $90. He also had everyone buying Amazon at $280, but he sold at $780 a year and a half ago. He cites these investments and a few others as reasons why he deserves to be his own boss. The fact of the matter is he has no idea when the correct time to sell is.

[u/[deleted]]

Banks hate this.

[u/easpider]

You need to diversify your bonds

[u/PM_WHY_YOU_DOWNVOTED]

Time to invest in mechanical keyboards.