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Why are you missing out on the biggest wealth cheat code?
Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Start. Congratulations! You now have 30 extra lives in Nintendo’s Contra. Enter your name. Z-E-L-D-A. Congratulations! You now start at the second quest in Zelda. Cheat codes enhanced the playing experience for many gamers growing up in the 80s and 90s. Whether it was accessing warp zones to shortcuts/secret levels, weapons and gear, getting extra lives, or loads of game money, cheat codes were passed around the pre-internet world via word of mouth and print.
Now, let’s take a short left turn. Let me tell you about my best stock purchase. In March of 2008, Visa IPO’d at $44/share. I bought some the first week it went public for $58/share. It was through an old 401K that I converted to an IRA. I never touched the funds because it was in a retirement account. I initially paid $5000 for just under 100 shares. A little over 13 years later, it is valued at just under $79K!
A nearly 15X in 13 years. I’m not bringing this up to brag, I have several stock/option investments where I’ve lost 100% in days. Once, I went full tilt on Google options on the expiration date and lost thousands of dollars in 4 hours. My head is still spinning from that incident. I’m just illustrating that the best stock trade that I made took 13 years of not touching to develop.
