Thanks for visiting my website/blog!
My name is Tom. I’m in my lower 60’s and retired. Double retired actually. My first career was in medicine, graduating from medical school in 1981. I retired from that job around the turn of the century and in 2002 I went to law school and practiced law in Austin, TX until 2010 when I retired, again, to manage our personal investments full time.
My wife is also a physician, but not an attorney. She still practices medicine and still likes it. We have been married 39 years and have two adult daughters and one incredibly beautiful, smart, adorable and otherwise perfect granddaughter. In fairness, my daughters also fit this description.
I bought my first stock in 1983, a pharmaceutical called GD Searle after I first tasted NutraSweet or aspartame. I think I also bought some Southwest Airlines around that time.
I was in the market in October of 1987, in 2000 and in 2008. For me the scariest of these pullbacks was the financial crisis of 2008-2009. I thought the economy may just freeze up. So many in DC and so many on Wall Street seem to have forgotten just how close we came to catastrophe.
In the 80’s and 90’s if you wanted to invest, it would cost you, a lot. Mutual funds had 3 per cent front end load and some had back end loads.
I used to buy shares by calling a number and entering some obscure sets of numbers to make a trade. I warned my brother in law, who was a broker with Prudential, when Fidelity started online trading for far cheaper than brokers would charge. I would get internet access through CompuServe to make trades.
Sometime around the time of online trading I bought my first options. I did a really poor job of it paying a lot of premium thatjust seemed to evaporate.
And finally, around 2010, I started trading multi-legged options and particularly spreads. Spreads will cap your winnings but they sure hedge your losses. I very rarely buy naked calls or puts these days.
Its been a great ride, and a lot of fun. But its taken me a long time to get to a point where I don’t worry about losses so much. Nowadays I have substantial put positions and I have a substantial position in volatility ETFs as a hedge.
Trading has taught me a lot, and I really do enjoy it. The only down side to doing this is that it is relatively anti-social. I miss seeing and dealing with others during the week days. And maybe that’s why I want to start this blog, to have some interaction about this with others.
So please, come back often. Challenge me. Ask questions. Volunteer suggestions. Maybe we will both get better at this and maybe we will both make a few more dollars (or bitcoins, ethereum etc).
Aloha . . . . for now!