Zero to Fuck You Money Update

When I first entered the US Investing Championship I started with $80k. That was in January 2023. That account returned 73% in 2023 and 93% in 2024.

At the end of 2024, I wrote a Substack entitled “Zero to Fuck You Money” where I offered some lessons I have learned in the last 25 years. I postulated that fuck you money, at the time in 2024, was ~$400k income. If you need more or less just scale.

So if you could get 70% returns this means you would need a bank roll of $574k.

In 2025, I decided to use an account with $1M in the USIC the reasons for this I will get to in a few years, but that original account is still running so let’s see where it is after 40 months after this whole Iran situation.

The account is up 27% YTD. Which is right on track for another +70% gain.

Schwab is showing an annualized rate of return of 91% as of Friday’s close. This number is slightly off because this account was originally at TD/Ameritrade and was ported to Schwab so analytics start in the middle of 2023 but it’s pretty close. The account is likely actually tracking ~85%.

And as of Friday, the account has $489k in it. Almost enough to declare fuck you money status.

By the end of this year, I suspect that account will have enough money in it, to generate $400k in yearly income. Assuming I am correct, that means it will have taken four years to get on top of this mountain. Which to me seems like a pretty good time frame that most people would be happy with. Granted, you have to start with $80k. This is one thing Munger was absolutely correct about. That first $100k is the hardest and most important BUT you don’t have to trade for that. You don’t have to turn $1000 into $100k (though this would be fun.) In fact, trying to turn $1000 into $100k is financial suicide.

All you have to do is be patient and put the money aside until your bank roll is large enough. Then start.

Oh god… I said the scary P-word there. Puhpuhatience! Anyways, lesson one should be don’t buy stocks until you have saved $100k. This way you have an understanding as to just how much work you had to do to get that $100k.

Back to that trading account it is 100% in the market at all times. No leverage. No derivatives. Long only. No shorting. No hedging. Full “risk.” Also, no stop-losses and is run under the expectation I will have to double, triple, quadruple down. You know, all the stuff people who under perform the market say you shouldn’t do.

The current account entered into the USIC Money Manager Division started with $1M in January of 2025 and has been running a hedging strategy because you should hedge.

It returned 75% in 2025. Remember in 2025, there as an official “stock market crash.” Still, made 70+%. And after 16 months, it is sitting at $2,35M. YTD it is up 30%. Right on schedule. Just like the other account. This is a gain of $1.35M in 16 months in case math is not your thing. Don’t worry, it’s not mine either.

So we are well into year four of this public display of returns. I don’t expect to ever win this contest. I know I could but the point is to show consistency. And, trying to win also means you risk under performing the rubric I am trying to demonstrate.

But, I feel I have gotten nowhere really with my original goal.

For twenty years, I have been trying to explain to people how the market works. But apparently, it’s nearly impossible when people equate “net worth” with “understanding.” Or worse, equate videos of a rented life style with “understanding.”

Soros, Buffet, Dalio, Graham, Dalio, Munger, Ackman, Burry, never in their entire lives lived directly off of trading profits. They have always made a living from management fees, interest, etc. or in Burry’s case from being a physician with an inheritance.

If you could go back in time and be born into a different situation would you want to be born into a rich family in the depression? Or would you want to born the son of an NFL quarterback and olympic track athlete?

Which life would actually want? One of fun and great genetics or one of spreadsheets, suits and ties, and recognition only when you are seventy? If the answer is the latter than maybe you shouldn’t read books about the former?

You can’t change your circumstances in reality anyways. Rich people aren’t going to just give you money and let you take 1-2% of it. You have to figure things out.

Buffet, Dalio, Burry, understand business. If you want to understand markets talk to a former drug dealer, a bookie, someone who makes a living as a picker or buyer and seller of baseball cards. If you want to be wealthy while young and aren’t born into the right circumstances than you should study Bezos. You should study Scooter Braun. He is a billionaire at an age he doesn’t botox nor a wheel chair.

Those are the people who have to beat the market to survive. In the case of drug dealers, they literally beat the competition. And that is more true in stock market than the concept that you “own a piece of the company.”

Palantir got upset Burry is shorting them so they ran to Trump to Tweet about it. That’s some street level knee whacking right there.

To restate, you have to actually understand the market to beat the market - consistently. Or you have to take stupid, stupid risks. Which leads me to the next group of myth makers.

No day-traded or prop trader I have ever heard of has managed to live off of trading consistently either. They get lucky for a year or two and then lose it all and spend the rest of their lives the selling courses or opening schools in the Philippines and trying not to get stoned by a mob. The smartest get lucky once and the just disappear. One of the most famous day-traders ever, I spoke to over email some years ago and explained very clearly why what he was doing wouldn’t work anymore.

And then watched as he completely ignore me totally lost everything in less than a year. One of my favorite stories to tell at social events is the tale of Amaranth Advisors who made money because of Katrina and then lost six times that amount then next year betting on Katrina’s cousin to follow the exact same route.

People do this with lottery tickets. Whenever a gas station sells the winning ticket the next week people will drive there to buy a lottery ticket.

Don’t ever think hedge fund managers are smarter than you. Trust me. They aren’t.

By the way amaranth is a toxic plant called pig’s weed that can cause kidney failure if you eat it. And, people still gave the firm money. Go figure.

Don’t ever think ultra high net worth people who can afford to lose $6B are smarter than you either.

They most certainly aren’t.

There is this great quote in response to the question “How can I make some money in the market?” in Livermore’s book on trading that I never fully understood until I started trying to explain to people how to make money in the market.

He wrote,

‘In my younger days I would go to considerable pains to explain all the difficulties faced by the one who simply wishes to take quick and easy money out of the market; or through courteous evasiveness I would work my way out of the snare. In later years my answer has been a blunt “I don’t know.”’

What I have learned is that the important missing piece is not the knowledge of how the stock market works, or even having to unlearn all the malicious bullshit Wall Street money managers and the like have been selling for over 100 years, it’s the you part.

I don’t know how you can make money in the stock market. Because each person is completely unique. Even if I gave a list of stocks most people would still lose money.

Over the last five years, I have been very fortunate to have a group of market participants to practice on. I purposefully keep up a Chinese Wall for legal reasons but from what has filtered through conversations in chat I am fairly certain about two dozen people have figured out how they can make money. Each following a slightly different strategy unique to their situation, their goals, but I presume all based on the same underlying understanding of how the market works, since we all use basically the same code.

Maybe two dozen out of about 300 who have showed up in chat. Less than 10%. If you have ever taught before you fail to reach most of your students. It’s just the way it is. It never feels good but that is just reality.

That attrition rate means, there are about 10% of people who have the mindset to do this. Well, of the people willing to pay for a service, 10% have the mindset. I’d say 90% of people aren’t willing to pay to learn anything so the actual percentage of the population is probably around 1%.

In 2019, the total number of books on the topics of economics, finance and the stock market I had read was zero. I owned a few rare and collectible ones but I had read none of them.

Since then I have read hundreds. And so far, just Fred Schwed’s Where Are All Customer’s Yachts presents the truth. I have yet to read one book on the stock market that is even close to reality though.

So when you are reading Substacks think about the numbers I posted. And then ask yourself if the people you follow actually understand the market? Or do they just provide you some sort of rigidity to what you already think is correct. Are they making a living off of you or off of the market?

It’s you that determines whether or not you make money. So you need to start assessing yourself. You need to start understanding why you think the things you think and then figure out if those reasons actually make sense.

Are those thoughts in your head yours. Or someone else’s? Unless you are Michael Burry. Trading his thoughts is never going to work for you.

Anyways…

what to do next?