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Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

Honest reporting on shorter-term trading activity and ideas
Pipsmum
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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#113206

Postby Pipsmum » January 25th, 2018, 9:07 am

Update. I was in on the joke... but my nerves just couldn't stand the pace. I decided I had gone quite mad, and cleared off just before it became half of what it had been. This Emperor has no pants (yet). I put the rescued remainder of this definite 'gamble' into a high growth share to lick its wounds and recover on it's own without such drama. Now my nerves can rest a little easier.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#113331

Postby will89 » January 25th, 2018, 3:04 pm

Pipsmum wrote:Update. I was in on the joke... but my nerves just couldn't stand the pace.


That's a shame! We've been lucky that only around 1% of our crypto portfolio was in Bitcoin, the vast majority being in ETH, which has actually not dropped off its ATH that much. Admittedly, I've been selling for the last month or so, around 25% of our portfolio, but I'm now happy to hold the remainder for a longer period.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#113358

Postby Pipsmum » January 25th, 2018, 5:56 pm

We can always re-join you when it points the right way. Mine were an ETH too but not real. Just a tracker. Yes, I should have held my nerve but the Carillion fiasco was still a strong spectre and ETH looked like it was vanishing into a puff of smoke in a matter of moments. I was just rescuing the half emptied bag before it fell off the cliff as far as I was concerned. It didn't of course....

Maybe the Emperor has a pair of socks after all.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#142569

Postby will89 » May 31st, 2018, 3:28 pm

I'm back! Sorry it has been so long.

The last few months have been... fun... obviously the cryptocurrency 'bubble' isn't so much of a bubble any more, I've spent the period assessing our position both from an investment and lifestyle perspective. We are now mid-business sale as well, which is expected to complete later this year and will hopefully reward us with a not insignificant lump sum.


I know some of you will want to hear how I'm now living under a bridge in a cardboard box, as my flaunted crypto investments collapsed around me, but sadly that didn't quite happen...


I sold half of my holdings between December and late January. This sum was used for the following:

1. Pay off the mortgage. We are now mortgage (and entirely debt) free at 28.
2. Invest the majority of the rest in ETFs (VUKE, VWRL, VFEM) in taxable accounts.
3. Fill our ISAs for this year. (We now hold a basket of 10 Investment Trusts in our ISAs: CTY, FGT, HSL, SMT, WTAN, EAT, HFEL, FCS, SLPE, 3IN)
4. Invest in some BTL property.
5. Invest a smaller amount in P2P lending, more as a replacement for bonds/cash savings than as an investment.
6. Pay a scary CGT bill.
7. Do some building work at home (more below).


Our intention is to shift to a much more flexible working lifestyle next year after the business sale completes. The intention is for our investments to provide a basic passive income to cover all costs, and then for much of the business sale proceeds to be used as a directors loan into our property development company to provide more 'lumpy' profit over time, with no pressure that this income is required to survive. I am also doing a bit of business consultancy and freelance writing in the cryptocurrency space, more for fun than money, but hope to expand this a bit as time goes on.

It's a very millennial attitude, but we are really looking forward to a more 'relaxed' way of life. We both love working together (we have sat in the same office for the last 8 years), and it'll be fun to do lots of projects together. Luckily we have a fair bit of property development experience already. We are also fairly thrifty, so our living costs aren't huge and we live in a relatively low cost part of the country. We are currently building a new 'home office' and carport combination, which should be ready for use by Christmas, and will hopefully give some useful separation between our actual home and our new working environment. I'm confident we can make the new lifestyle work and am looking forward to both being busy with exciting new things, but also being able to have self-enforced 'quiet periods' of work if we are lucky enough to have children and want to take some extended time off, or if the right projects just don't come along etc.


Of course, I'm still invested in cryptocurrency and think it has a very bright long term future, but not necessarily in its current form. Our investment portfolio now looks something like this:

Investment Trusts (all ISA) - 15%
ETFs - 35%
P2P Lending - 5%
Current Property Projects - 25%
Cryptocurrency - 15%
Cash/Premium Bonds etc - 5%

The cash from the business sale will nearly double our pot, so that's the next big step. We will likely use 50% towards property projects (definitely development, we don't really want to be landlords), and 50% will go straight into ETFs.

It feels crazy to look back at my first posts in this thread and see how my investing approach has changed, both due to a bit of success, a big bit of luck, and an increased desire for simplification and passiveness. It's mad to think it has only been 18 months!
Last edited by will89 on May 31st, 2018, 3:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

will89
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Re: The Long Road To ISA Millionaires

#142572

Postby will89 » May 31st, 2018, 3:38 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
will89 wrote:ETH just broke out of a huge bull pennant that has been forming since May. $600 is on the way :)


Genius, congratulations! Where are you going to retire to?

GS (Nov 2017)


Somerset.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#142710

Postby Wasron » June 1st, 2018, 8:56 am

Will,

Congratulations on being mortgage and debt free by 28, that’s impressive in this day and age.

We were also mortgage and debt free by the same age and found it very liberating. It gave us the flexibility to get used living on one income for a couple of years before starting a family.

For those couple of years the second income was saved and hardly dipped into while the kids were young giving us the cash buffer we’ve still got and it funded a significant portion of our non-pension investments.

It’s allowed us to see more of the kids as they grow up and our childcare costs have been nil.

Good luck in your next venture

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#142932

Postby DiamondEcho » June 1st, 2018, 8:16 pm

Wasron wrote:Will, Congratulations on being mortgage and debt free by 28, that’s impressive in this day and age.
We were also mortgage and debt free by the same age and found it very liberating.


I think it sounds like having got lucky and given up early. 28 is waaaaaaay too early to give up the risk-on attack if you're on for it [there are so many life-crises you can and will live through towards the actual end-point lol]

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#142951

Postby will89 » June 1st, 2018, 9:06 pm

DiamondEcho wrote:I think it sounds like having got lucky and given up early. 28 is waaaaaaay too early to give up the risk-on attack if you're on for it.


Definitely not giving up, just don’t feel that the societal conditioning of a 9-5 being the only way is necessarily correct for us any more. It’s more like a career change, with the additional risk of no guaranteed salary. The new path is definitely the riskier one, especially considering our investment portfolio still being angled towards crypto etc.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#143117

Postby DiamondEcho » June 2nd, 2018, 7:41 pm

will89 wrote:Definitely not giving up, just don’t feel that the societal conditioning of a 9-5 being the only way is necessarily correct for us any more. It’s more like a career change, with the additional risk of no guaranteed salary. The new path is definitely the riskier one, especially considering our investment portfolio still being angled towards crypto etc.

No no, I don't mean it as 'negatively' as it perhaps sounded. But just be careful about exiting the 'normal work world' as you might find others consider you with some uncertainty, even suspicion. I say that as for example I knew a group of guys who were around that age who gave up careers to become day-traders back when that was very fashionable ['SOES Bandits' https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/soesbandits.asp]. When the .com bust came they were finished; and suddenly having quit a career to become a day-trader painted them in a very negative light. It was 'obvious for all to see', only after the bust happened, that it was inevitable, those who 'fell for it' didn't fare well later. Around the same time, just post .com I was receiving a lot of resumes [in the US] from job applicants, who'd quit finance careers to try and set up their own .com businesses that had ultimately failed. I'd just be cautious of not following a path with similar risks; is crypto that evolved and stable to base your near-term future on it?
Could you parallel your present work with crypto work until you're comfortable letting one job fully go? I know people who've continued careers whilst getting their own ventures off the ground [after-hours and on weekends]. Hard work for a while, for sure, but at least there's something to fall back on in that you'd still be employed.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#143433

Postby will89 » June 4th, 2018, 9:25 am

DiamondEcho wrote:No no, I don't mean it as 'negatively' as it perhaps sounded. But just be careful about exiting the 'normal work world' as you might find others consider you with some uncertainty, even suspicion.


Sorry, I completely misinterpreted. I think that's actually a really valid point. Unfortunately, the nuances of the situation that we will be in mean that it will be much easier from both sides to have a complete cutoff from the business at the point of sale, which means it won't be possible to continue working for a salary while pursuing other avenues. To be fair, I guess that's what I am doing now and plan to keep doing for the rest of 2018. Even if I'm in the office I'm now splitting my time probably 50/50 between the 'day job' and other ventures.

I probably worded the Crypto aspects badly, to me now it's mainly just like any other part of our investing portfolio, just at the risky end and without giving any passive income (aside from a few holdings). Our plan is to ensure that we are self-reliant purely based on more 'traditional' investment income, so that any additional income from property development or consultancy, writing etc is supplementary.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#182772

Postby bulltraderpt » November 24th, 2018, 10:51 pm

It's good to read someone did well out of the Crypto bubble. You will probably never get another chance in your life time to partake in something so bubblicious, so well done!

I was too naive and listened to too many, I felt, sound arguments regarding the scarcity of such investments, but every generation has its suckers so well done you.

I always felt for Crypto to genuinely work, you needed a limited supply of a certain amount of the type of coins available, clearly this was not the case! Greed ran that market up and fear will ultimately destroy it.

Although perhaps if Bit coin ever broke below $1000 and under some might say there is value there once government regulation comes into force?

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#182808

Postby ReformedCharacter » November 25th, 2018, 11:22 am

bulltraderpt wrote:I always felt for Crypto to genuinely work, you needed a limited supply of a certain amount of the type of coins available, clearly this was not the case! Greed ran that market up and fear will ultimately destroy it.

I don't know about other cryptocurrencies but Bitcoin is limited by supply:

...bitcoin's inventor Nakamoto set a monetary policy based on artificial scarcity at bitcoin's inception that there would only ever be 21 million bitcoins in total. Their numbers are being released roughly every ten minutes and the rate at which they are generated would drop by half every four years until all were in circulation.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Units

RC

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#182835

Postby bulltraderpt » November 25th, 2018, 3:42 pm

ReformedCharacter wrote:
bulltraderpt wrote:I always felt for Crypto to genuinely work, you needed a limited supply of a certain amount of the type of coins available, clearly this was not the case! Greed ran that market up and fear will ultimately destroy it.

I don't know about other cryptocurrencies but Bitcoin is limited by supply:

...bitcoin's inventor Nakamoto set a monetary policy based on artificial scarcity at bitcoin's inception that there would only ever be 21 million bitcoins in total. Their numbers are being released roughly every ten minutes and the rate at which they are generated would drop by half every four years until all were in circulation.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Units

RC

It is, but my (badly) made point was there was or is nothing stopping others from coming up with other coins, as the market has done.

Now if all that is left in the rubble is Bit coin and a couple of others with a limited supply, then I can see it eventually being used as it was intended once government regulates.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#182865

Postby GoSeigen » November 25th, 2018, 7:08 pm

bulltraderpt wrote:It is, but my (badly) made point was there was or is nothing stopping others from coming up with other coins, as the market has done.

Now if all that is left in the rubble is Bit coin and a couple of others with a limited supply, then I can see it eventually being used as it was intended once government regulates.


I really can't see this happening. Bitcoin is one of the worst of the cryptos. About all it has going for it is its notoriety. Despite this the other, more "advanced" coins have collapsed faster. What does that say about the entire concept?

Blockchain may survive as a technology but it's still hard to spot the potential winners as far as I can tell.

GS

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#182914

Postby bulltraderpt » November 25th, 2018, 10:48 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
bulltraderpt wrote:It is, but my (badly) made point was there was or is nothing stopping others from coming up with other coins, as the market has done.

Now if all that is left in the rubble is Bit coin and a couple of others with a limited supply, then I can see it eventually being used as it was intended once government regulates.


I really can't see this happening. Bitcoin is one of the worst of the cryptos. About all it has going for it is its notoriety. Despite this the other, more "advanced" coins have collapsed faster. What does that say about the entire concept?

Blockchain may survive as a technology but it's still hard to spot the potential winners as far as I can tell.

GS

Yeap you could be right, no doubt about it. Plenty of HOLDers still believe though and from what little I know it's this blockchain where the value should be in the future.

Cheers!

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#183001

Postby will89 » November 26th, 2018, 12:06 pm

Yeap you could be right, no doubt about it. Plenty of HOLDers still believe though and from what little I know it's this blockchain where the value should be in the future.



I think you're completely right. Blockchain as a concept isn't going to disappear, it's got a huge variety of potential benefits for systems like value transfer and supply chain tractability, but the 'marketplace' was completely broken, we we just lucky to get in on the rollercoaster and get out at a good time.

As a quick update, after paying off our mortgage in the Spring we then ended up putting almost all of the remaining cash into ETFs.

Last week we actually remortgaged our house on a 10 year fix, I was going a bit crazy knowing that we had so much equity (and % of our net worth) locked up and not producing an income, when I could borrow against the asset at such an attractive rate. With the remortgage proceeds we've bought a couple of new build BTL houses where the numbers work well from a yield perspective and also hopefully offer some prospect for capital growth. Plan is for that 'pot' of property equity to be segregated to try to build a larger property portfolio, with the next step being to take low LTV mortgages on the properties we just bought when we find something else, and keep the snowball going with sensible leverage over time. Savings from occupational income etc will then all just be put into ETFs to protect diversity. We've been planning to do the property thing all year, but it's taken 9 months to find a deal that stacked up both financially and practically.

Business sale has been put on hold due to some family illness, wife getting pregnant and a few other factors that meant we all thought stability might be good for a few years. All that really means is more guaranteed income for now, which will get saved as much as possible to try and grow our passive income. I've set a personal target of being able to meet our annual spending with passive income in the next 3 years (although we'll still just be reinvesting it in reality), which I think should be achievable.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#185189

Postby GoSeigen » December 6th, 2018, 10:46 pm

will89 wrote: just lucky to get in on the rollercoaster and get out at a good time.


At least he's been man enough to admit it. Pure luck. Wealth obtained at the expense of thousands of poor people who lost their shirt on the wrong side of the rollercoaster. Got out at a good time but pretended it was a great asset to be getting into. Now invests in real stuff like fiat currencies and property.



GS

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#188379

Postby will89 » December 20th, 2018, 2:44 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
will89 wrote: just lucky to get in on the rollercoaster and get out at a good time.


At least he's been man enough to admit it. Pure luck. Wealth obtained at the expense of thousands of poor people who lost their shirt on the wrong side of the rollercoaster. Got out at a good time but pretended it was a great asset to be getting into. Now invests in real stuff like fiat currencies and property.



Not pure luck by any means. Hundreds of hours spent researching a market and learning about technology doesn't count as pure luck, just like if you spent months reading balance sheets and the FT and found the next small cap gem - all luck? What did Gary Player say?

If you read back through the thread I started talking about crypto in March 2017, me 'pretending' it was a great asset to get in to back then would have done you pretty well. In my posts in December 2017 and January 2018 I mentioned that I was selling a large percentage, but keeping the rest for long term holding. That still stands, it's just that the amount I kept is now worth less... My posts in the second half of last year emphasised how the market looked like a bubble, but that the technology was strong, which I think was probably a fairly astute observation. I always made it clear in my posts that I was more interested in the technology itself than the price, and at no point did I try and 'fool' people into investing, as you seem to be implying.

Grumpy that you didn't buy any? Now is probably a good time ;)

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#188388

Postby DiamondEcho » December 20th, 2018, 3:19 pm

will89 wrote:Not pure luck by any means. Hundreds of hours spent researching a market and learning about technology doesn't count as pure luck, just like if you spent months reading balance sheets and the FT and found the next small cap gem - all luck? What did Gary Player say?

IDK, but I agree with what you are suggesting, as did the Roman philosopher Seneca :D
I've done well over the years with my investments but it has involved a vast amount of work which is ongoing. On one or two occasions over the years if someone has suggested in a dismissive way that it's all been down to luck, and means it, I have replied with the Seneca quote: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

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Re: Hitting 1 Million - Stocks & Crypto [formerly Long Road to Millionaire Topic]

#188391

Postby will89 » December 20th, 2018, 3:30 pm

DiamondEcho wrote:
will89 wrote:Not pure luck by any means. Hundreds of hours spent researching a market and learning about technology doesn't count as pure luck, just like if you spent months reading balance sheets and the FT and found the next small cap gem - all luck? What did Gary Player say?

IDK, but I agree with what you are suggesting, as did the Roman philosopher Seneca :D
I've done well over the years with my investments but it has involved a vast amount of work which is ongoing. On one or two occasions over the years if someone has suggested in a dismissive way that it's all been down to luck, and means it, I have replied with the Seneca quote: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.


Indeed, and it's all about perspective anyway. GS may be grumpy about the rollercoaster and people losing their shirts, but even after witnessing the massive bubble of late 2017, an investment in ETH placed on the date of my first post discussing the subject, March 3rd 2017, would still result in a profit of 750% if you bought then and sold today. Lost shirts are relative.

I hope I was informative and largely objective during the discussions, I would hate to think I had been 'pumping' crypto to anyone here at any point, especially late last year, I always endeavoured for it not come across that way. I would hate for discussion on the merits of the tech to get lost in the noise of the market.


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