My Warning to people Gambling on the Stock Market

Today, I would like to talk about my

experience losing over $15,000 on

the stock market. This is my warning to

anyone who thinks they can get rich on the

stock market. I'm not trying to dissuade

anyone from getting into investing or

learning about finance. It's just I have a

few things to share that I think could

save people a lot of money if you're about

to make the same mistakes as I did. And in

case you're thinking, oh, you're talking a

load of rubbish, I make loads of money off

stocks, I've been doing this for 5 or 10

years, then great, congratulations.

You're like the top 2% of people who can

actually make money. I'm not saying it's

impossible. I'm just saying it's extremely

difficult and 98% of people just are going

to just lose money. Before 2020, I never

really showed any interest in stocks or

financial stuff or businesses. I was a

very simple guy. I liked my video games.

I liked chasing women and I liked just

being lazy and doing nothing. But then

everything changed in 2020 during the

lockdowns and the global health situation.

So in the year of 2019, I received quite

a lot of money in the form of a life

insurance payout because my dad passed

away. And this was the largest amount of

money I ever had. I didn't really know

what to do with the money at the time, so

I just left it in my bank account. I just

saved it for a rainy day. And then in

2020, when the stock markets went insane

and it basically turned into this massive

casino, I started watching YouTube videos

from people like Meet Kevin Financial

Education, Graham Stephan, Andrei Jikh,

who were all pumping out videos about how

great it is investing in the stock market

and how you can make 100x gains on this

random penny stock. And I thought, wow,

this looks amazing. These guys definitely

know what they're talking about. So I just

started buying random penny stocks,

putting all of my money, thousands of

pounds, into just random stocks. And in

the beginning, in the first few months I

was doing this, everything was doing

really great. I would put money into a

stock and then within a week or 2 weeks

they would nearly double in value. And

this feeling of making so much money in

such a short amount of time felt amazing.

The adrenaline and dopamine rush I got

from it felt better than anything I've

ever felt in my life. And I can honestly

say I was completely addicted. I

completely lost interest in everything

else in my life, and my whole life became

dedicated to waking up, checking my

stocks, watching the stock market for 8

hours straight. I would literally sit

there as the market opened and just watch

stocks and charts and stare at it all day

for nearly 8 hours straight until the

market closed. It was a pretty unhealthy

lifestyle. And I think this is one of the

reasons why my girlfriend at the time

dumped me because it must have been pretty

boring living with me and being in a

relationship with me when all I wanted to

do was stare at these little stock charts

all day long. But I didn't care because in

my mind I thought I was going to become

rich. I thought I was going to make like

$100K, $200K. And I thought to myself, oh

my God, how have I never gotten into

stocks before? It's so easy to make money.

All you do is buy low and sell high. I

honestly thought I was some kind of stock

genius like this gifted person who just

magically managed to pick good stocks all

the time. Unfortunately, I didn't realize

that every stock was going up because the

Federal Reserve was basically pumping

trillions of dollars into the market,

forcing everything to just go to the moon.

So the good luck continued for maybe 4 or

5 months, and I was bragging to everyone

about how much money I've made, how I can

quit YouTube, don't need to make YouTube

videos anymore, and life seemed pretty

great until the beginning of 2021.

When the whole thing just kind of popped

and crashed. I woke up one day and all my

stocks were down 20%, but I thought, it's

okay, I'm still in the green, it will

bounce back up. Buy and hold, diamond

hands. I was really into all of the

WallStreetBets and the meme stocks and all

the memes and the community that had

formed around this stock market phenomenon

of 2020 where everything was just going to

the moon and people were making tons of

money. The whole GameStop and AMC thing

was really exciting to be part of, and I

was really caught up in the moment like a

lot of people were. And this excitement

just turned into greed, and I wanted more

and more. And I was kind of worried that

there could be a crash coming around the

corner, but I kept thinking in my mind

that, oh, it's not going to happen this

year, it's going to happen next year.

I'll, I'll be out of the markets by then.

This is easy, I'm just going to sell

everything before the crash happens. So

the crash happened when I had all my money

in basically 2 or 3 meme stocks. I thought

if I wanted to make some big money, I need

to start placing some big bets. So I put

about £10,000 into 3 different stocks

for a total of £30,000, which was

basically my entire life savings at that

point. I had BNGO, Microvision, and

Palantir. They were like the top meme

stocks at the time, and I thought they'd

go into 10x, 20x, or even more. At first

they were doing pretty well and had like

10 or 20% gains. But then after a few

months it all just crashed. Every morning

I woke up to check and it was down another

10 or 15% and my heart just sank. And I

kept thinking, okay, Warren Buffett's

advice is to buy and buy and never sell.

And just buy and hold. So I thought,

okay, I'm gonna buy more and just carry on

holding, and eventually it's gonna go back

up. As you all know by now, it never did.

And BNGO and stocks like Microvision,

Palantir dropped for a total of probably

over 90%. I think BNGO is like a penny

stock now. It went from a high of $14,

which is around the time when I bought it—

I bought it around $12— and now it's like

60 cents or 70 cents under a dollar.

Fortunately, I didn't hold it until it

drops down to under $1. I think I sold

BNGO when it was around $7 or $8. After I

took about a 50 or 60% loss, I decided

I had enough and I cut my losses. I sold

everything. I sold Palantir, Microvision.

After losing over 50% of my initial

investment, I was just done with it. And

I'm so glad I cut my losses when I did,

because if I just kept holding and

holding, I would have lost like 95% of my

entire life savings instead of just 50% or

60%. I felt so stupid because I got

completely suckered in by these stupid

YouTubers like Jeremy from Financial

Education and Meets Kevin, who would put

out these dumb videos where they'd be

raving on about how amazing this stock is

and how it's going to 20x over the next

few months or 100x over the year, and how

they think it's such an amazing company

with amazing financials and amazing

management team. And pretty much all of

these stocks that these YouTubers were

raving on about back then have dropped

over 90%, and I really don't think they're

going to bounce back. People like Jeremy

and Meets Kevin, they were just convincing

and they had so much charisma, and I feel

really dumb for believing every word they

said and having so much faith in what they

thought. I thought, wow, these guys are

multimillionaires, they've been doing

stocks for 5 or 10 years, they must know

what they're talking about. But in

reality, they were just guessing and

probably lost a lot of money just like I

did. And there's one stock called Tattooed

Chef that Jeremy and Meet Kevin were

raving on about for ages. Me Kevin made a

video about why he thinks it's an amazing

company back when it was like $24 for one

share. And Jeremy made how many videos? I

don't know. After years of pumping out

dozens of videos about how he's invested

over $1 million in Tattoo Chef, he

recently finally admitted he sold

everything and lost over $1 million in it.

So even these so-called stock gurus and

geniuses, they lost loads of money too.

But it's not so bad for them because

they've got these huge YouTube channels.

And they probably make millions of dollars

every year just from the YouTube videos

alone, plus their other business

investments. But for someone like me, I

nearly lost my entire life savings that I

only managed to get thanks to the life

insurance payout. £20,000 is a huge amount

of money for me because I don't really

know how to make a lot of money easily or

quickly. I feel like these financial

YouTubers are basically the modern-day

versions of Jordan Belfort. If you watch

the movie Wolf of Wall Street with

Leonardo DiCaprio in it, you'll know who

he is. Basically, he was this stock guy in

the '90s who managed to convince loads of

people into buying these really cheap,

crappy penny stocks. And he would tell

them over the phone about how this is a

great investment opportunity and you'd be

stupid to miss out on it. And he's really

convincing and really charming and

charismatic. So these people just believed

everything he said and ended up losing

millions of dollars buying these stocks

that he recommended. He made a lot of

money doing this, but eventually he was

arrested and sent to jail, but he only

spent like 22 months in jail and he was

ordered to pay back hundreds of millions

of dollars, which I think even to this day

he still hasn't paid back all the money.

And these YouTubers that made all these

videos pumping different stocks, they're

basically doing the same thing,

convincing thousands of people who are

watching the video into buying these

stocks that they're recommending. And I'm

sure I'm not the only one who watched

these videos and ended up losing a load of

money, but there's loads of other people

who also lost a lot more money than I did.

Needless to say, I don't watch any of

these financial YouTubers anymore. More

like Meet Kevin or Financial Education. I

think they were just talking a load of

rubbish and I would never take whatever

they say seriously or believe it ever

again. As for me, I'm still investing the

money that I have left over. It's just I

sold everything and reinvested it into

more sensible stocks like ETFs and more

stable dividend stocks. I think a

reasonable expectation is to make a bit of

money, like 5% maybe over a year. But if

you want to double your money or 10x your

money, Sure, it's possible if you're dumb

and put loads of money all onto one penny

stock, you can 10x, but then you can also

lose 10x. If you have a gambler's

mentality and an addictive personality,

then maybe you should stay away from

investing in stocks because it is very

tempting to try and get a 20x gain,

20% gain or something like that, just by

putting loads of money onto some really

ridiculously dangerous and speculative

stock. Maybe you'll be extremely lucky and

make a lot of money. But then I think what

will happen is you'll just want to keep

doing it because it feels good and you'll

get hooked. And eventually one day your

luck will run out and you'll lose

everything. I feel like the main problem

is trying to resist what everyone else is

doing. When everyone else is really

excited and euphoric about the markets and

think they're going to become

billionaires, then that's kind of the time

when you need to step back and say, this

looks kind of risky. This, this looks like

a bubble that's about to burst. And you're

probably going to be right. But when

everyone's fed up with the market and

thinking, I'm never touching stocks ever

again, this sucks, then maybe that's the

time you should think about getting into

it. Basically, you have to do the opposite

of what the masses are doing.

Unfortunately, the stock market is a game

that was created and rigged by people who

are a lot smarter than you or I, and the

way they make money is by making us lose

money. And they'll try and put out

propaganda and amazing news articles

saying This is your only chance to get

into the market before it 10x's. Get in

now. Oh my God, everyone's making so much

money. They'll pump out this stuff,

tricking as many people as possible to buy

in at the top, and they'll try and trick

as many dumb retail investors into getting

into the stock market before they decide

when to pop the bubble and reap all the

benefits of going short. And then the same

thing happens the other way. They'll start

putting out articles saying this is the

worst stock market recession crash that's

ever happened. In 10 decades, and they'll

just try and get everyone to sell all

their stocks until things get so cheap,

and then they scoop them up again when

they're really cheap, and then they'll

just pump it back up again. And they're

just emotionally manipulating the masses

to profit and make maximum profit and make

loads of money by, by crashing and pumping

and crashing and pumping the market

repeatedly over and over again.

Unfortunately, the majority of retail

investors are just destined to lose this

game. So I guess at this point I just feel

very unconvinced that anyone can actually

make any money by doing this. Maybe if you

waited like 20, 30 years and you were

lucky and you picked some good things—

you're not gonna pick everything that's

good, you're gonna pick maybe, let's say

for example, you pick 10 stocks, maybe 6

out of 10 will do well and then 2 out of

10 will do really badly and then another 2

out of the 10 will do not too bad and then

your average will just be like a measly

10% gain after 30 years. So I don't

believe you can become super rich by doing

this unless you're extremely crazy and

lucky or a genius. I think for most people

over their lifespan, if they manage to

stick to doing this investing thing,

maybe they'll make a 10 or 20% gain, but

that's it. You're not going to be able to

do this for a living or become super rich.

You're going to have to stick to your day

job. So yeah, that was my experience and

my warning not to gamble and potentially

lose almost all of your money. And don't

listen to these stupid YouTube videos

about how you can become super rich by

just buying this stock and it's going to

10x over the next week.