The Unlikely Path Towards Financial Independence: How Meme Stocks Taught Me the True Value of Investing

From Rookie Mistakes to a Million Dollar Goal.

I started my investment journey nearly 5 years ago now in November of 2020. A hectic time in the world but I was young, naive, and eager. I didn’t know the potential risks to my first positions, or have any insight into how these companies would look in the years following the covid-19 pandemic, but I did know one thing. I was fascinated by the money making potential the market brought.

My first positions in the stock market were mainly brands I had respected, and recognized my whole life or companies I had recently seen discussed on reddit. These positions were speculative at best, but my first purchases were fractional shares of Apple, Tesla, shares of a newly listed company Palantir, and a cyber security company I can no longer remember the name of. Funny enough a portfolio of these stocks would have performed somewhat decently over the last 5 years, however none of these companies lasted beyond the beginning of January.

As a young and naive investor I was off to what I thought were greener pastures. My reddit browsing had led me to a company that I remembered fondly as a child, GameStop. Its stock price had recently climbed from $5 to $15 and I thought this must be a sure fire sign of a good investment, so I went all in. Somehow this strategy was successful, and over the coming weeks my investment would increase by over 5x. In what can only be dumb luck, days before the “buy button scandal” on my 21st birthday I sold my entire holding in the company’s stock, at a massive gain. Over the coming weeks I enjoyed looking at my gains, and I only grew more and more arrogant as GameStop’s share price was dropping drastically.

Over the coming months while looking for a new investment I found AMC Entertainment, and I think who doesn’t love going to the movies?(Me!) As I have become increasingly confident in my stock picking skills, I decide to go all in on the stock using a combination of stock and options. From April to the end of June, my investment in AMC Entertainment stock and options had gone up more than 10x. I had nearly 2x my yearly income in the position at 21, needless to say I thought I was on top of the world. My luck would soon run out however, instead of selling the position I thought the company’s stock price would essentially keep going up forever, thus making me a millionaire. Through a combination of AMC Entertainment’s poor stock performance, and selling my shares to buy call options during the mania, when I finally exited my position at the start of 2023. I was in the red, and my position was worth just $1,000.

2022 was a year of many expensive, and rather painful lessons in the stock market for me. By the summer of 2022 I had nearly wiped out my entire net worth, and in what was one of the toughest times of my life, I ultimately made the best decision I have ever made. I became obsessed with financial literacy and determined to slowly build back what I had lost. I started consuming every bit of information I could find. From reading the classic’s, One Up On Wall St., and The Intelligent Investor, to the Phil Fisher, and Howard marks books, and to all the annual Berkshire Hathaway meetings I could listen too. By the end of 2022 my investing philosophy completely changed, I fell in love with the idea of compounding money, and I became obsessed with analyzing business moats, runway for growth, management teams, financial statements, and valuation.

Over the last couple of years I have continued to refine, and adapt my investment philosophy’s. When I learn new information, either through my own experiences, or the teachings of others. In 2025 my net worth surpasses where I was at the peak of the “meme mania” by nearly 40%. As surreal as it all seems now both the best and worst decisions I’ve ever made have come out of investing in “meme stocks”.

Over the next 10 years, I plan to grow my investment portfolio to over 1 million dollars. Through market gains, and contributions. I hope to have you follow along my journey as I share my research, philosophies, experiences and thoughts over the coming years.