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Lansing, Michigan
Posts: 9 since May 2018
Thanks Given: 21
Thanks Received: 11
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[I am not sure if this is suppose to be a separate post, or if we Introduce ourselves in the “introductory post by BigMike. Please remove or move my post if needed. I have only been on this site for a few days]
Cześź,
My name is Aaron and I currently reside in the Midwest. Below is a little bit about me, and my story:
I grew up in a small agricultural community that consisted of some very large farming operations. And while I didn’t farm, I worked for farmers. Sleeping over at a friends house meant helping them with their chores, and then being too tired to play SNES or Sega anyways and just falling asleep. My father didn’t farm, but family members on both sides of my family were Agri producers. My fathers side consisted of business owners, doctors, surgeons, engineers, both enlisted and commissioned members of the military, nurses, teachers, happy house wives, physicists that are currently researching well underground on the SNO+ Higgs Proton project and classically trained musicians. We also have one non-denominational preacher, and one deacon in our family (We’re a large Polish Catholic family, so the non-denom preacher is the outcast. lol) My mothers side consists of business owners, the highest of high level executive level personal at Ford and Fiat-Chrysler, an owner of a bank whom was also the mayor of his 100,000 population town, union members in various skilled trades, an uncle that is a large operation physical grain producer/hedger, and then... a few family members that are generational welfare recipients that include a murderer, a stripper, and a few drug addict dead beat parents.
That’s where I come from, and now we come to me:
I grew up in Ann Arbor, MI. “Go Blue!” I went to a class-D school where I was a savant level saxophone player and musical arranger. I played football as a nose guard until everyone got bigger than me and kept giving me concussions. After that, I decided that I should just be the punter. Lol
After graduation of highschool, I went to a community college for Music a Performance (Transfer Agreement with a university of Michigan). After completing my two years at CC, the economic crises hit; however, I needed money for university, so I joined the Naval Reserves as a UT-Seabee drilling while attending university. After finishing training, I moved up to Marquette, MI and began attending Northern Michigan University as a Music Education and Technical Theatre major. I later changed my major, and graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Industrial Science with a Minor in Industrial Climate Systems.
After graduation, I was offered a six-figure job (not including the insanely great benefits package) and moved away from my fiancé to start building our life, and preparing a home for us in Minneapolis — We married eight months later, and she moved to Minneapolis. Life was good. It was nice having my best friend back.  I began working for a company that dealt primarily with industrial climate and HUGE mechanical systems for nuclear power plants, refineries, and hospitals designing and installing critical climate systems. All the while, I was working during the day, I was also going to a local state university for Electrical Engineering during the evenings. Eventually I left that job, and became a Controls Engineer, and designed and installed building automation Direct Digital Control Systems in Industrial settings, stadiums, hospitals, and every single skyscraper in the twin cities. (I still maintain the building automation system and have network access to Cargill and UBS.) After graduating from the state university, an employer paid for me to attend U of M - Madison for a certificate in Robotics and Automation.
And then I was involved in an Industrial accident causing my back to be destroyed and in need of surgery, and having to leave my career as a hands on industrial Controls Engineer. So what did I decide to do?
Well, since I was involved in the trades and had management experience, my wife and I started to flip homes. I bought my first house for $160k. It was a 1937 1.5 story cedar shake bungalow next to one of the oldest private Law Schools in the United States. To make a long story short regarding the house: I had an egress window installed in the basement, replaced the basement carpet, and included a 10’x 15’ basement hydroponic garden setup for scientific experiments regarding plant cloning and trait stabilization in Carolina Reaper hot peppers. Everything I had done to that house cost me $3500 — no more. no less. I sold the house 18 months later for $250k and made the buyers literally pay for everything on my side of the closing. It was awesome... and this is where my trading became more active, and not so much passive as it had been for a few years in my while messing with my individual trading account, and my employer 401(k).
When I first started “messing around” in stocks a few years prior, I got lucky buying natural gas very low, CNX low, and CLF at its near lifetime low. My positions were small consisting of only one thousand shares of each company; however, in under one year, CLF was a 10+ bagger, and CNX was a 3 bagger for me. I officially had my stake, and it was all based on using my industrial science degree in a way that I never knew that I could. This was all during the time of the house “remodel” which was nice because it kept me busy while my employees were there doing the work, so that I wouldn’t hurt my back further.
Moving into the election season, I started noticing social media blowing up about marijuana companies being the next “1990’s tech boom,” so I decided to toss a little money into the pot and ride the pump before the dump. I got in at below one cent, and sold everything when the market started trading a little less thin around Halloween days before the election. Lucky for me, I got out before Jeff Sessions got in causing not only the dump, but an extreme retracement to historic lows. Trading in the marijuana market was literally more useless to a trader than tits are on a boar. I officially had enough to start learning to trade futures and options.
When I found out how commodity futures trade, I was also intrigued by the fact that I could hedge my positions with options. I enjoyed the fact that I was safe if my futures positions went against me because I had my options to bail me out. Conversely, if my futures position proved to be favorable, I could just let my options contracts expire worthless. I finally found the area of the market that I loved the most. It was also the type of trading that made the most sense to me. I’m sure glad that I didn’t start trading binary options like most of the friends that I talked into trading binary options because there was “limited risk.” lol
Fast forward one year: the houses were sold, my accounts were funded, but my back was still hurt. (P.s my wife was, and still is, supportive of the trading, and the constant talking about how this or that world event could effect this commodity or that commodity. My wife even reads me financial books like “On Up on Wall Street” while we’re in the car driving.) Since I couldn’t work in my previous field, had a massive three year no competition agreement with my last employer, and wasn’t able to use my last 12 years of university education plus thousands and thousands of hours of real on the job experience, I sued my ex-employer because I was stuck in the house not able to do anything but watch my rear-end grow and it was killing me. And what was the injury settlement you might ask? The employer had to pay for four years of me going back to school at University of Michigan (I am currently in the Computer Science program, but have thought about switching to the Bachelors of Science degree “Mathematics of Finance and Risk Management” because it allows me the option to get an accelerated masters degree my senior year plus one extra year in “Quantitative Finance and Risk Management.” Both degrees together are nearly a Computer Science degree but with Finance courses and way more upper level Mathematics beyond Calculus 4. I have a little bit of time to decide, because the first year or two are nearly the same classes. A few C++ classes, Philadelphia ysics 1 and 2, two General Chemistry classes, and four upper level mathematics class.
I have more that I would like, and inform you all about you my passions, but it’s late at night, I babysat to little girls under 10, I have a three month old baby in my arms, and I have mass to take everybody to early in the morning.
So, I’ll have to tell you all about starting/building/running the largest fly fishing supply business in the Midwest and east coast later. I’ll have to tell you all about my love for doing frame-off-restorations on anything with a big block with my father. I’ll have to wait and tell you all about my love for racing motocross, enduros, and hare-scrambles later.
Thank you all for this wonderful board.
Dobranoc i do widzenia,
Aaron M
Proud Catholic
Proud Husband
Proud Father
Intermediate Grain trader
Feedlot Owner
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