How I turned $15,000 into $1.2m during the pandemic – then lost it all

Ikept the news in all the way out of the terminal until halfway through the airport parking garage, which was as far as I could hold it. It was the kind of announcement that was too voluminous for the inside of a car, so I blurted it out to my parents in the open air in a half-mumble, half-laugh.

“So, umm, I turned $15,000 into $1.2min the past year.”

They both stopped and looked at me, silent.

“Are you on drugs?” my mom finally asked, anxiety flashing across her face. My dad said nothing. I dispelled her accusation by opening up my investment account on my iPhone and turning the screen towards her to show her the balance.

“Oh my God, are you one of those … GameStop people?” she said, referring to the brief and spectacular rise in stock price of the video game retailer after amateur investors rallied around it in early 2021.

My dad remained silent, in a way that felt more accusing and harder to confront – as if I had suddenly upended his conception of the world. Both of my parents had taken vows of poverty to each other as part of their wedding vows; their guiding philosophy was to “live simply so that others may simply live”. They owned no property because of their choice to be “war tax resisters”, and both had consciously dedicated their careers as a legal aid attorney and a Presbyterian minister to lowpaying social justice work at the detriment of material possessions and substantial retirement accounts.

But if his worry was that he didn’t know how to relate to a son who was now rich, then he needn’t have. Not about the money anyway, because within four weeks, the bulk of it was gone. In the span of a year, the numbers came, danced, disappeared.

What took longer was un-becoming the asshole they almost made me.

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Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, have spent their entire adult lives in a financial paradox. Despite cascading crises, right now is the most materially comfortable moment in human history. Climate change threatens to render all of this moot, but on a pure quality of life measure, we collectively enjoy better health outcomes, longer lives, more education, more indi

Illustration: Avalon Nuovo/The Guardian ‘I had gained an extraordinary amount of money, but my mind was consumed by the half a million I had missed out on by not selling.’

Illustration: Avalon Nuovo/The Guardian ‘I went to bed at night eyes buzzing with blue light from endlessly refreshing my investment account.’