How I made $60k then promptly lost it all and ended up owing taxes I couldn't pay... (Part II)
Continuation from Part I... (I had just made $30k speculating on a penny stock)
Now that I was well capitalized, I knew I couldn't be reckless with my money. However, for someone that wasn't used to having that kind of money and someone filled with ambition, that money was burning a giant hole in my pocket.
The thought of being prudent with my money was quickly replaced with, "now if I just find one more of these hot stocks I could be close to a millionaire pretty soon."
So, I decided I would slowly dump this money into that other penny stock that I already owned, the cleaning company that sold soap infused sponges. I would buy in with $15k and if it dropped I would continue to average down with the other $15k and then just wait for it to pop.
Sure enough, the stock started to drop, even though the news coming out of the company was getting better and better by the week.
It didn't take long for my extra $15k to be bought all in the stock as well. So I was up to $30k invested in this thing, all my money. I didn't like the position I was in, but hey it just needs to pop a little from it's current position and I would have a lot of money, I told myself.
So, I waited.
Luckily for me the stock didn't move much, just kinda stayed there for a bit so I didn't have to stomach any big drops. Then out of no where the stock started climbing... up 10% each day, before I knew it with all my averaging down I was now up double on my money! I was up to $60k, so I said sell sell sell and I sold the darn thing. $60k was sitting fresh and clear in my bank account. It really was an amazing feeling.
Now what do I do next? I am now sitting with $60k in cash and ready to rock and roll on the next one.
I decided the best thing to do was to wait for a pull back in that same stock I had just traded since it really seemed to be the best stock both fundamentally and promotion-wise in all of penny land (a cleaning company that sells soap infused sponges?! Really? What the hell was I thinking!). I waited for a few days and sure enough... just as I had hoped... a 20% correction. I bought $20k in.
Then a few days later, another big drop, this time 50% or so. I bought all in with the rest. Now I am all in again with $60k on the line. Now all I have to do is wait for it to start going up again and I will be rich!
However, literally the very next day after I bought all in, something very bad happened. The SEC announced that all trading in the stock had been suspended and the company was under investigation for a massive money laundering/pump and dump scheme.
Just like that, my $60k was frozen, untradeable. I couldn't sell it, transfer it, or do anything with it.
Finally after 5 days of waiting in agony, the SEC unfroze trading in the stock and it immediately opened 90% down. I couldn't believe what had just happened. No way was I going to sell here it was way too far down. I will wait for a pop to get out of this thing, I thought to myself.
However, a pop would never come. The next day, down another 30%. The day after that, down another 10%. At this point my $60k is now worth just a couple hundred dollars. I decided I would hold on and pray that the company would be cleared of all wrong doing and I could at least get some of money back.
That would not be the case though. A few days later, the company declared bankruptcy and the stock was delisted. My money was officially gone. Just like that $60k gone... I didn't even know that could happen, at least not like that!
It had turned out the company had been orchestrating most of the trading volume in their own stock and had been involved in a massive pump and dump scam. The insiders wound up going to jail but none of that helped me as I got none of my money back. That seemed like a pretty hard lesson to learn for me. However, at the end of the day, "easy come, easy go" right?
Well it got worse...
Something I hadn't realized at the time was that I was still on the hook for paying taxes on that $60k I had earned during that calendar year... because I had lost the money in the following year, even though it was only a couple weeks later it just so happened to happen right at the time when the new year began. So, not only did I lose $60k in a matter of days/weeks, but now I owed close to $8k in taxes when I literally had no cash to my name.
So I did what any early 20 something year old who found himself in a heap of trouble would do...
I called mom and dad and asked them to bail me out!
Luckily for me they were able to take out a loan and pay my tax bill. That got the tax man off my back but I would have to get a traditional job and work my butt off to pay them back over the next several years. It was a long hard road coming up with that kind of money but I learned a very valuable lesson, don't invest in a sponge companies! Just kidding. I learned that one must always be prudent with one's money.
The lone benefit, besides the teaching aspect, was that I got to carry over that $60k in losses every year on my tax return until it is used up which has helped offset any gains I have had in following years.
Following my massive blunder, I tried going back to counting cards at the casinos for a bit but it just never worked out quite as well as it did when I first started, even though I probably was even better at this point than I was back then. I guess that hot start had a lot more to do with luck than actual skill on my part. It turns out that you lose just about as often as you win when you count cards, but if you put in enough hours it can become profitable in the long run. Something I decided I wasn't willing to do.
So, after taking my lumps and a whooping from the stock market, I was able to collect myself over the next couple years and figure out what I wanted to do. These experiences, however difficult they might have been, would be the beginning of my career in finance and help teach me how important it is to be prudent with my money. This complete wipe out would be what ultimately launched me into getting involved with investment partnerships and financial advising later on in life but it sure was a tough lesson to learn early in my life.
Moral of the story?
Don't invest in penny stocks. Don't be greedy. Don't be stupid. There are no shortcuts in finance and in life. Take your pick, there are many! :)
Anyone have any kind of similar experiences?
Live well my friends!
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no youre weren't. You don't pay taxes on unrealized capital gains. just like you can't deduct unrealized losses. Even if you don't know anything about finances, im not sure how anyone could miss this just based on the wording of the schedule D worksheet. It literally asks you to fill in how much you sold the stock for.
i think maybe you need a better accountant.
It was realized. Read it again. I had made $60k, sold the stock. At that point gains were realized. I waited a few days then bought back in with that $60k. Over the course of the next several weeks the stock went to basically worthless right at the same time the new calander year had changed. So by the time I sold it, I had $60k in gains in one calander year and then $60k in losses in the followong calander year, even though the buys and sells were only weeks apart.
It's unfortunate that I've heard this story more times than I can count over the years. The good news is once you "learn your lesson" and remain vigilant in avoiding those "oversized" money-management mistakes, you can do quite well. It was also this guy's story when I first met him, which we talked about in this "interview" (if you can call it that)... lol
You may also appreciate this story I posted a few weeks back, though it seems like in this case the guy may have been making it all up. However, the wisdom remains the same:
Link: Apple Trader loses nearly $2.5 MILLION bankroll then tries to "GET IT BACK" on one BALL-BUSTING BET!
Yes, thankfully it was painful enough I learned quite a bit from it. I also learned a little about the tax laws! Thanks for reading.
So the government won 8 000 in the end.... Crazy story. I glad you are well now.
Haha! Great point! The government never loses! :)
In the end the house always wins. :(
Bingo!
Great story. Penny stocks are always tempting, but so often manipulated. For every one that's really good, there are 100 crappy ones. You learned it all at once!
Oh yea, penny stocks aren't driven by fundamentals at all. It is all about promotion and hype. The few legitimate companies out there in penny land get a bad rap because of all the others. My neighbor actually owns a mining company listed on an OTC exchange... and it is actually a legitimate company, go figure. :)
My buddy used to try and tell me, "just look at like you just lost $1200, not the $60k because that money all came from the market." I would always respond to him with, "yea you are right, but tell that to the damn tax man that I had to pay $8k to!" ;)
Lol... sounds like yobit ;)
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Alas... when we play in their game, with their rules, they win... paper anything just ain't worth the risk... glad you found a bit of relief rather than swallowing the whole shebang!
Yea I am not sure what I would have done if mom and pop didn't bail me out back then. I wouldn't have qualified for any kind of loans back then. I probably would be on some kind tax relief plan or something like that trying to pay it back for years...
Holy flip, the tale is bad enough but that thorny tax bit is just the (bad) icing on the cake. I can only imagine the feeling as you gained that first 60 though!!
Haha yep, it was the kick in the groin after I was already down...
Wow that´s a nasty trading experience, I recently sold the only pennystock i ever had. Had been hoping for 2 years, but did nothing but decline. Luckily i at least got some of my money back, my worst investment ever. haha
Do you still trade stocks?
Yes, now I trade part time from my own account. I don't trade individual stocks much though, usually I trade options or sometimes ETFs.
I will have to resteem this so that I don't forget to read later tonight. I am a trader myself so, this can be some great advice to hear 0r read ;)
Thx
Thank you and hopefully you are able to take something from it! :)
Never got that lucky with any investments lol. But yeah, I'll call that a series of black swan events with a little of Murphy's Law. Unexpected stuff only happens when it happens.
Most I've lost was ~2500 usd. I thought I've had created the holy grail of forex bots, back then. It ran perfect all through the most high-resolution datasets I could find, spanning about 20 years. Lesson learned about bots and investments in general, it's smart until a "dumb" thing happens in the market.
So the question now is, can we create our own little black swans?
Haha so what was the "dumb" thing that happened in the market to cause your bot not to perform as expected? I saw a lot of that kind stuff happen around the craziness with the debt ceiling back in August of 2010 or was it 2011? I can't remember now...
I can't even remember all that much now. Tried plenty of models and variations - then just proceeded with a trial run when it seemed to work over a decade of data. Went kaput in 4-5 days lol.
We had a technicals based trading strategy that we used at my trading partnership that showed profits of roughly 1% per day when we tested on a simulator. We ran it over data of the previous 2-3 years. (not a big time period, but we literally had tested it on thousands and thousands of setups). We went live with it a few months before that Debt Ceiling crisis in 2010 or 2011 I mentioned earlier. It worked OK for the first couple months, not quite 1% gains per day, but still it was definitely profitable. When that debt ceiling crisis happened we ended up taking massive losses very quickly and many of our investors pulled their money. Oh, the black swan...
And yes I am hopeful that we can create our own little black swan event with steemit and steem, but in a good way. :)