Deja vu

I have tons of things to do on my "To Do List" but I feel totally unmotivated to do anything about them. It is very frustrating to say the least.

I am pretty confident that I am not suffering from depression but I am constantly frustrated. The frustration come comes from sensing that I am not going anywhere or achieving anything. May be I am measuring myself in a wrong way. May be the quote from the animation is right, "I have unfortunately linked my self-worth to something I am not very good at". May be I have to change what I am evaluation myself against.

In my view, "happiness" is like a chair in that it has 4 legs - health, family, personal finance and career. Like all 4 legs of the chair all are equally important. In my case, (cross finger/knock wood) I am happy with my health. I am not happy with the other 3. So how should I address the shortcomings and end up being happy?

I think, I can I fix the family issues. Career is something I don't have much control over. Again, I am not happy with where I am, but I really don't know what will make me happy.

What I think, I should be able to control but have not been able to do so is my personal finance. It is something which has been very frustrating for me. 

Compare to many people in my circle, I am dong fine, but I am not happy with where I am. By this time, I should have a fully paid house and at least $500k in the bank. That way even if I did not have job, it would given me flexibility. Unfortunately, I am not there yet. I would have been in that situation if my investment had turned out well. I bought a co-op for 190K in 2003. It should have been worth at least $500K by now if I had bought elsewhere within my commuting distance. I would be lucky if I can sell that for $300K now. I lost $15 investing in the company called Portal Player in 2003-04. It was supplier to iPod. It lost contract as lot of Apple suppliers do. Apple was $40 back then, $7 split-adjusted. If I had bought $40K, which I could have done, I would have been a millionaire by now. More recently, I played with TWTR but the missed the breakout from $15 to $40 or MU from $10 to $50 or M from $30 to $40. I missed the big run-up since Trump's election. I feel that now we are towards the end of the bull market and the opportunities are few.

If I can fix this, I think this will make me at least 80% happy.

A Disastrous ETF Trade

Made a disastrous ETF trading this week. First, was TBT. I had both long and short position. The long position was the hedge. I exited the long position the day before yesterday. Looking at the chart, it bumped against $39 level twice suggesting to me that the range-bound trade was playing out. So exited the position 2 days ago. Yesterday, there was surprisingly strong economic numbers – ADP and Non-manufacturing ISM. TBT gapped up. I should have sold it when it surpassed $39 but I hesitated hoping that it’s fade. Did not happen. It moved quickly to $40 but did not hold that level. Today, I was hoping that the fade continued. Didn’t happen. The momentum was too strong. After it broke above the opening high, I covered the short. The most depressing part of this trade is that I initiated the short at the low-end of the range ~$36. It was a disastrous trade. Second was UNG. This was also a ranged trade, between $22-$24. I bought it as ~$23 but promptly fell. It held the support level and just climbed steadily. It went past $24 but I thought it was moving up too quickly. I exited the position ~$25 ahead of the EIA data. The ETF wobble for 2 days but held $24 level. It gapped up the beginning of the week and reach almost $27 within 3 days. What a bummer.

My trading record has been absolutely terrible over past 15 years. I really need to make it work because it is my ultimate backup plan. Why? Because I am a 45 year old with funny accent. My career is going nowhere. I am looking around but the prospects do not look good. First I don’t know what kind of work I want to do for the next 10-15 years. Second, landing an appropriate level job will be harder given my age and “lack” of professional progress. So I have to count on trading as a last resort.

But trading has not worked out as well as I had envisioned. It is not the lack of knowledge that is handicapping me. I have read books. I have read magazine articles. I have listened to podcasts. I have watched videos. But my knowledge has not translated to results. Something is missing. I can guess what that might be, but whatever it is, I must fix it quickly. I might be out of my job before Thanksgiving – that has been typical time for layoffs. That does not give me too much time.

I would like to do Swing Trading as well as Scapling/Day Trading but my work does not allow me. So I cannot do a dry run to make sure my strategies are feasible. I can do week-long trading on ETFs but it is hard to develop strategies around that.

Tony Robbins, Dave Ramsay et. al.

Yesterday I worked from home – I can do that whenever I want to, or feel like doing. I just have to inform my manager. It is one of the few perks of otherwise dismal career.

The downside of working from home is that it is easy to get distracted especially nowadays when I am generally frustrated about my career. Since there is no one looking over, I tend to indulge – take a sip of whisky here, watch Trevor Noah / John Oliver there, snack incessantly. By the end of the day, I realize that I had done nothing productive whether personal or work-wise, and that adds to more frustration.

One productive thing I did do was watch a series of YouTube videos on “career change” “finding what you want to do” etc. The notable one was obviously Mr. Tony Robbins, who talked about “creating your story”, a psychiatrist talking about, I forgot about what, and bunch of other people babbling about stuff in theoretical terms and not from their experience. They were not that helpful.

I did bump into Dave Ramsay’s channel and listened to several people calling him about their personal finance problem. I did not know about Dave. I checked his Wikipedia page and he had an interesting story as to how he got to be what he is now. Needless to say, his solution to his listeners was to live within your means, reduce your debt esp. credit card, and find way to earn more. Later I found an interesting Politico profile on him. I had given thoughts to be becoming a Personal Finance expert myself but I was unsure as I did not know what I could add to an already crowded field. Even if I don’t preach Personal Finance, I still want to be well-versed in it - it is like being health conscious.

I definitely need a feasible plan to revitalize my career. It must start with what I’d like to do and what I don’t; what I am good and what I am not; something that leverages my existing skills rather than some that does not. While I do want to come out of my comfort zone, I also don’t want to venture into a strange territory. Ideally, it has to be something I can do for the next 20-25 years and be proud of it.

Day 1 - Frustration Galore

I am starting a journal, an anonymous journal to precise, because I want to chronicle my journey, my professional journey to be exact, from here on. I feel I am at a significant cross-road of my career. I have no idea what turn it will take, how long this process will last, and where I will end up at the end of this voyage. 

I am a 45 year old married man with an 11-year old son. I have a decent job with decent pay with decent benefits. I am not struggling financially but I am also not where I thought I would be at this point in my life. To be honest, even if my finances have not done as well as I wanted, I am not too worried because I can manage as I am frugal (Note, I don't consider myself to be cheap and there is a  a big difference between the two; a frugal person orders chicken instead of steak; a cheap person leaves 10% tip while frugal leaves 20% - I am the "chicken & 20%" kind of person).

What is really bothering me, and which is starting to become really unbearable is the state of my career. I feel my career is coming to an end imminently because I will lose my job either voluntarily or involuntarily within a year and I have no idea what I will do next. As I told a friend recently, "I feel like my career is in a plane that is about crash but I am helpless about it. All I can think of is, "is this how this going to end?"."

First thing first. Why am I frustrated with my current job in the first place? For someone from outside, it does not look that bad. I work at a well-know Fortune 100 company located in a big city in the US East Coast. My works requites lot of reading and being up-to-date with market and industries; so I am familiar with lot of topics. The pay is decent (but great if consider what I do). Benefit is good, especially important for my family. Manager does not act like a manager, so I have lot of flexibility - I can work from home whenever I want; I just have to tell, not ask, if I am away from work. Since I am good/efficient at what I do, I have spare time to do other things, like trading, getting up to date on news (for instance, on Thursday, I spent the whole day (in-between my tasks) watching the live-stream of Ford/Kavanaugh hearing in the US Senate, which was fascinating), and helping my professional association where I am a volunteer officer. Someone may ask, what's so bad about it. Two things. First, I am not making progress position-wise or salary-wise; I am earning as much as I did 10 years ago; I don't see myself getting promoted from my current position ever, and that's not good; as saying goes, stagnant water attracts parasites and germs. Second, since I have stuck professionally and everyone around me has moved on or moved up, I am working with people that are 15-20 years junior. So I really don't fit in my office environment.

I have to do something about career, and that also very soon. I have toyed with lot of ideas in my head but that's about it. I am like a deer frozen by a headlight, stuck at a cross-road and very frustrated.

My Amazon Store - But Why?

This diary is meant to keep record of my real-time experience, especially the ups and downs as well as my emotional state, which I believe is probably more pertinent to readers, of opening my first Amazon Store. That sounds great but why, specifically, why  am I opening my first Amazon Store, and why am I writing a diary?

Let me address the 2nd question first. I am assuming that I will be successful, but if I am not (I give that 90% livelihood - sure, call me a pessimist), I hope I will learn something from it, even if it is as inconsequential as, "ok, I am not good at it". If I am successful, I hope other people can learn from my real-time experience. I have read about and listened to successful people recall how they achieved their success. But I am skeptical about their recollection even if they're trying to be genuine because of what psychologists call, recall bias. Recording the experience real-time should eliminate that bias, and let readers appreciate what exactly is like to go through the experience of opening a successful Amazon Store. 

Now, the 1st question, why am I opening my first Amazon Store? To be frank, I don't have to. I have a steady job with good pay and benefits. I have a stable and supportive family; btw, my family and friends don't know that I am doing this. More importantly, I really don't have time to do this; aside from work and family obligations, I am active in social/professional organizations. I guess the reason I am doing doing this is because I am in a "mid-life" crisis. 

The definition of "mid-life" crisis for me is the feeling of "self-let down". That means, in retrospect, knowing hindsight is 20-20, I was not able to capture my full potential, or what Malcolm Gladwell calls, capitalization rate. And I am disappointed especially when I compare myself to my peers, classmates and colleagues, and what they have achieved thus far. The sore point for me is complete lack of progress in my career. Sure, I enjoy what I do and I think I am good at it, but I feel I am stuck with no chance of promotion (i.e. higher income) in the foreseeable future while my contemporaries are doing bigger and better things at my company or elsewhere. As such, I feel out of place in my group and don't enjoy the collegiate aspect of my work. Of course I could look for bigger and better job/career. Trust me, I have done that but to no avail. I feel it has become harder as I have grown older. That brings to my next point. If I were to lose my current job, I will probably not find a comparable one, and I will have to find a different career. That's where Amazon shop comes in.

I have always contemplated owning a business. Ideally, an investment company that owns equity or full ownership in different type of businesses. But obviously, capability, capital and credibility have been the issues. I have not given up on that yet, but we'll see what happens. A more practical route is to own a small business. I have given thoughts to that also including franchise, gas station, restaurant etc. But I have been hesitant for several reasons.

1. Time - I have a full-time job and it is hard to be physically at 2 places at the same time
2. Financial - I am hesitant to make a big upfront investment without knowing how it will eventually work out.
3. Personality - I am not a salesperson. I am neither good nor want to sell things in person.
4. Preference - I want a business which can run on its own without constant oversight 

My Amazon Store addresses all those concerns since everything is done online and/or over the phone and the initial financial commitment can be as small as I want it to be.

Wish me luck!