My uber driver made $100k last month trading

I took an uber to the airport and got a LECTURE on investing

He said he’s a “short term investor” and looks for attractive entry points on blue chip companies and applies leverage for short term profits

He made $100k last month, he told me as he drove with his face buried in the stock app on his phone. (I had to ask him politely to please not drive while on his phone)

His most recent trade was Alibaba. I’ve always found BABA interesting because it trades at an absurd discount to U.S. comps—but the “no free lunch” part of my brain has always assumed the China discount exists for a reason.

I asked what valuation he was using.

He said he doesn’t look at valuations. Of course, silly me.

He was pretty smug as he told me exited his gold trade last week and is now fully in cash.

I asked how much of a tax bill that was going to create and he said, “I don’t care. As long as you are making money, taxes don’t matter.”

Interesting.

He asked me what I do for stock investing… my time to shine.

I said, 4% of stocks are responsible for stock market gains over time and I’m skeptical of my or anyone’s ability to to know which those will be ahead of time, so I prefer to own as many publicly traded stocks as possible and in a tax efficient way that allows the compounding to occur uninterrupted.

He didn’t respond and the conversation ended.

Oh well, I guess my investment philosophy is no fun.

I have much to learn.