Personal/Family Everyday Investors

So I know there's a lot to be had with investing personally, even a lot. The problem I realize though is that you must have money to make money. Any significantly successful investor (as in regular family people who are just skilled) I can't see making so much with a regular job that they can invest enough to make millions. Is it really possible to turn, say, $20k in savings into millions?

Or do the "xxxx and family" investors that make all of this get portfolio money from other sources?

2 Comments
 
Best Response

At a 20% IRR, it would take 21.5 years to turn $20K into a mil...(and what would inflation do in that time?)

People who say "I turned my $10K bar mitzvah money into $2 million in 3 years" are either:

a. Flat out lying or leaving out a key fact b. Took some insane risks and got really lucky

Sure, you could take $20K and buy way out of the money calls on something and get rich quick, but c'mon, you might as well go put $20K on a number on a roulette wheel at Vegas.

Now, if you start out with something more reasonable, say $100K, then you could turn it into a mil in something like 10 years if you achieved strong 25% returns over that time period.

PS - If you wanted to lever up, usually you have a tough time with an account size so small. If you wanted to turn $20K into a mil really quickly, I would try to get something that were along the lines of selling ATM options and buying OTM options of the opposite type, something ultra levered like that (or futures, you can get roughly 18X on oil futures right now, as one example).

I think Thiel bought 3% of FB for $500K back in 2004, at the $50B valuation, that's a 3000x return. So I guess if you invest $20K in the next FB, that would be $60M in 6 or 7 years lol.

 

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