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I… am skeptical of your numbers. $100k invested in 2017 turning into $2m in 2025 implies a 46% annualized return over 8 years. Those numbers are not realistic

I… am skeptical of your numbers. $100k invested in 2017 turning into $2m in 2025 implies a 46% annualized return over 8 years. Those numbers are not realistic from even the world’s top hedge funds. That begs the question of what magic well of oil you struck to yield those numbers? The only public investment I can see is TSLA. And I would not recommend an average Joe YOLO $100k into TSLA.

blonder 1y ago
Bitcoin was in the thousands for most of 2017, that as a booster to a tech heavy portfolio would have done extremely well.
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  That’s true… BTC returned 100% per year since 2017 (thanks to ChatGPT for the math). But I would presume a regular Joe didn’t YOLO $100k into that, either. I guess my original point was: there is no realistic way a retail investor walked away from a $100k investment a multimillionaire after 8 years unless they took an enormous, absurd punt.
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    If you invested $100K in Microsoft (one of the safest and most valuable and boring company in the world at the time) in 2017 and held, you’d not be a multimillionaire, but you’d be a millionaire. People really underestimate how crazy the asset bubble has been over the last decade.
    - andirk 1y ago
      USD 100k is an absurd amount for most people to invest all at once in anything whatsoever, not to mention the risk level involved. USD 10k is a lot but more reasonable. And that nets way less than USD 100k in this situation, which isn't life changing.
underlipton 1y ago
Off the top of my head: Bitcoin was around $1k in 2017 and, after jumping up to about $20k, was back at around $4k in 2018. It's recently been over $100k, and fairly reliably been over $40k for much of the time in-between. Gamestop's share price was below $10, stock split-adjusted, for many years, bottoming at $1 ($4 unadjusted). It infamously rocketed to over $100 ($400) in January 2021, with several similar, seemingly-random bursts of upward volatility since. Even now, depending on your entry, buyers from before the high would have seen somewhere between 200% and 2000% returns. There are a number of other so-called "meme" stocks which briefly performed similarly, though most have not retained even a fraction of their increase. Both could have been used to hit $2m or more with a single set of buy-sell transactions. That's not considering leveraged trading like options. Keith Gill infamously turned $50k (briefly) into a billion dollars (and is likely, more durably, a centimillionaire). In short: crypto and options, buying early and holding long. 2017 was actually almost the perfect time to jump in. Someone who was looking in the right direction could easily have struck oil, as you say. (Let's not even talk about the guys who made $660m off the negative oil price incident in 2020.) ZIRP and lax oversight of the securities market structure make odd things happen.
- slg 1y ago
  Retroactive analysis like this is almost worthless because these were incredibly risky investments in the moment and would have required a prolonged commitment to them that most didn't have and/or couldn't maintain. Considering the original claim here was that getting these returns wasn't possible without already being wealthy, you might as well ask why OP didn't get a loan to make these investments if they were such a sure thing.
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    The article talks about Saquon’s bitcoin investments and investments in startups. The same argument can be made there as well.
    - Esophagus4 1y ago
      Fair point. But I will say that Saquon has access to deal flow that most of us will never have access to (they mentioned Anthropic and Stripe, for example).
darth_avocado 1y ago
My investments weren’t yolos and not everything was held to where it is today. Things were obviously bought/sold and diversified Btc $2k -> $120k (60x held) ETH 200 -> $4k (20x held) Tesla 20 => 400 (sold), then bought back in on its recovery at $150 when it went to $100. Sold again at $300. FB => DCAd my cost down to $120 in the late 2022 (6x now, all holding) Nvidia => $5 after accounting for splits, now $170 (34x) Infamous FAANG: Netflix is 8x, Microsoft is almost 10x, Amazon and Google are 5x, apple 7x Those weren’t my only investments and I’m not pretending to be a genius but even SPY is 3X and QQQ is 5X. But just a little prudent investing would’ve gotten you a lot of money. If you just held $100k of Microsoft you’d be a millionaire and it won’t need a magic well of oil.
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  I stand corrected. I didn’t realize MSFT was up 10x over the last 10 years. Wow.
- georgeecollins 1y ago
  Awesome! It sounds like you made smart investments. I think the kind of person who is here is going to be on average smart about the future.

blonder 1y ago

Bitcoin was in the thousands for most of 2017, that as a booster to a tech heavy portfolio would have done extremely well.

Esophagus4 1y ago
That’s true… BTC returned 100% per year since 2017 (thanks to ChatGPT for the math). But I would presume a regular Joe didn’t YOLO $100k into that, either. I guess my original point was: there is no realistic way a retail investor walked away from a $100k investment a multimillionaire after 8 years unless they took an enormous, absurd punt.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  If you invested $100K in Microsoft (one of the safest and most valuable and boring company in the world at the time) in 2017 and held, you’d not be a multimillionaire, but you’d be a millionaire. People really underestimate how crazy the asset bubble has been over the last decade.
  - andirk 1y ago
    USD 100k is an absurd amount for most people to invest all at once in anything whatsoever, not to mention the risk level involved. USD 10k is a lot but more reasonable. And that nets way less than USD 100k in this situation, which isn't life changing.

underlipton 1y ago

Off the top of my head: Bitcoin was around $1k in 2017 and, after jumping up to about $20k, was back at around $4k in 2018. It's recently been over $100k, and fairly reliably been over $40k for much of the time in-between. Gamestop's share price was below $10, stock split-adjusted, for many years, bottoming at $1 ($4 unadjusted). It infamously rocketed to over $100 ($400) in January 2021, with several similar, seemingly-random bursts of upward volatility since. Even now, depending on your entry, buyers from before the high would have seen somewhere between 200% and 2000% returns. There are a number of other so-called "meme" stocks which briefly performed similarly, though most have not retained even a fraction of their increase. Both could have been used to hit $2m or more with a single set of buy-sell transactions. That's not considering leveraged trading like options. Keith Gill infamously turned $50k (briefly) into a billion dollars (and is likely, more durably, a centimillionaire). In short: crypto and options, buying early and holding long. 2017 was actually almost the perfect time to jump in. Someone who was looking in the right direction could easily have struck oil, as you say. (Let's not even talk about the guys who made $660m off the negative oil price incident in 2020.) ZIRP and lax oversight of the securities market structure make odd things happen.

slg 1y ago
Retroactive analysis like this is almost worthless because these were incredibly risky investments in the moment and would have required a prolonged commitment to them that most didn't have and/or couldn't maintain. Considering the original claim here was that getting these returns wasn't possible without already being wealthy, you might as well ask why OP didn't get a loan to make these investments if they were such a sure thing.
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  The article talks about Saquon’s bitcoin investments and investments in startups. The same argument can be made there as well.
  - Esophagus4 1y ago
    Fair point. But I will say that Saquon has access to deal flow that most of us will never have access to (they mentioned Anthropic and Stripe, for example).

darth_avocado 1y ago

My investments weren’t yolos and not everything was held to where it is today. Things were obviously bought/sold and diversified Btc $2k -> $120k (60x held) ETH 200 -> $4k (20x held) Tesla 20 => 400 (sold), then bought back in on its recovery at $150 when it went to $100. Sold again at $300. FB => DCAd my cost down to $120 in the late 2022 (6x now, all holding) Nvidia => $5 after accounting for splits, now $170 (34x) Infamous FAANG: Netflix is 8x, Microsoft is almost 10x, Amazon and Google are 5x, apple 7x Those weren’t my only investments and I’m not pretending to be a genius but even SPY is 3X and QQQ is 5X. But just a little prudent investing would’ve gotten you a lot of money. If you just held $100k of Microsoft you’d be a millionaire and it won’t need a magic well of oil.

Esophagus4 1y ago
I stand corrected. I didn’t realize MSFT was up 10x over the last 10 years. Wow.
georgeecollins 1y ago
Awesome! It sounds like you made smart investments. I think the kind of person who is here is going to be on average smart about the future.