About

I began trading shortly after the 2008 housing meltdown. At the time I was an executive at a major cruise line. My role as head of the music department covered a fleet of 23 global cruise liners and included itineraries across all 7 continents. With a global footprint, having such a dynamic responsibility and fiscal management of a $15 million operational budget, it helped me shore up my business savvy and piqued my curiosity about the market like never before. At the helm of our company was a well respected industry veteran who the management and executive teams had the privilege of meeting with once a quarter for a sort of “State of the Company” address. The part of the meeting that always excited me was the discussion about earnings and the expectations of Wall Street. After the quarterly meeting I would rush back to my desk and immediately go to Yahoo finance, Finviz, Google finance and other financial websites to gauge the Street’s consensus. I would then check back over the coming days to see how the stock behaved after earnings, and over the subsequent weeks to see if the company received any upgrades or downgrades. As I continued tracking the stock I eventually got a sense of it’s range and general sentiment about the company from an institutional perspective. I figured I should not only know the ins and outs of my job but equally important to me was how the company performed financially. So it’s no surprise the bait that hooked me and led to some of my very first trades were cruise line stocks. Although a competitor, Royal Caribbean (RCL) was my favorite. I still follow and play the big 3 even today. Especially around earnings.