Halfway Through, But Still A Long Way To Go

June 30 marks the middle of the trading year for many mooers, but not for me. You see, I only became a mooer less than 5 months ago. I signed up, got my free Intel share, and ventured into a world I never knew existed.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not new to investing. I have been trading for many years, way before Moomoo even existed. But I used traditional brokerages, those with online platforms that traders log in to, enter their orders, then log out. These brokerages, of course, have links to news and announcements, written by analysts, for analysts. What they did not - and still do not - have, is a vibrant exchange of ideas within a trading community – comments and posts written by traders, for traders. They also do not have a plethora of educational materials written in a language and at a level comprehensible to me. To be frank, Moomoo has made trading more fun and enjoyable.
Anyway, what happened during my short adventure with Moomoo? I shall share a few of my more memorable Moomoo moments with my fellow mooers.

I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts that I would like to keep my free Intel share for a century. Unfortunately, my stop loss was triggered in April, and I sold it at 29.16. The price of Intel at this moment of writing is 35.72. In hindsight, it was a bad decision, but it didn’t seem that bad when I sold the share.

I was not an options person. However, after going through part of Moomoo’s "Option Study Plan", I realized that trading options can be a good way of managing risk. Being totally new to options, I read up on the subject. So what’s next? Try it out, of course!

“Take The Plunge” is the title of my very first Moomoo post. I don’t like to just “talk the walk”; I prefer to “walk the talk” as well. So on that fateful 14th day of April, I made my first amateur mistake of buying a call option with only 7 days to expiry. Needless to say, my UBS call option expired worthless 7 days later, and I lost 15 USD, ex-fees.

Luckily, my risk management strategy dictated that I should only buy 1 option to test it out, because I did not fully understand how the option market works. It was a lesson well learnt, and totally worth the price of my loss. Not only did I learn about the time value of options, I also learnt that the fees for options trading are much higher than that for trading shares. The commission and fees added up to 3.43 USD, nearly 23% of my option value. For shares trading, the fees would be just 1.07 USD or so.

While browsing through the posts of fellow mooers, I came across a stock I had never heard of before. I did some research and then decided that this company may be worth investing in. I am so sorry to the mooer who posted that article. I would like to give you the credit, but I cannot remember who you are or which article it was. Anyway, I bought the stock, and it proved to be the dark horse I was waiting for. So thank you very much, whoever you are. This is one of the benefits of being part of the Moomoo community.

I may be halfway through the year, but my investment journey is far from over. This is only the first Half-Year Recap for me. I still have many more to go through, hopefully. 
As a mooer, making a profit isn’t my only goal. When I joined Moomoo, I fell in love with an inanimate object. I am pleased to announce that I am now in possession of the object of my desire. I think I will leave it in the original packaging for a while.

I have since set my sight on something else.

Watch out, Alchemist. I am coming for you.