I call myself an ambitious artist. I love working on a fresh idea that lets me use my creativity and imagination.  And this is the very reason why I studied Economics and Business in UC Berkeley. I have taken many courses in competitive strategy and entrepreneurship. I have studied many case studies and read books to utilize my natural talent.

At Junior year in high school, I started my first business, online bookstore.  The business made great profit but I soon realized that cash flow fluctuated heavily due to product’s seasonal demand pop-and-down.

I changed my business model and item category to clothing. After I found several suppliers, I sold the items back to US and Europe. The margin was high but I also found that market was overcrowded with many competitors , and if you are not following the ever-changing fashion trend, you can easily be in trouble; A man’s track jacket that was sold at 90 dollars had to be sold at 40 dollars 6 months later. Also it was very difficult to predict what size of pants and shirts would be sold the most. I wanted to submit the request of buying only a certain size, but most times, suppliers did not want to sell only that size at the price I wanted.

After having tough time in clothing business, I switched my business to electronics.

I researched and found a major competitor company of iPod; this was back in the days when Apple just launched mini iPod. iRiver was a Korean company that had much market power in Asia and Europe. With arbitrage opportunity I found in the study, I could make huge profit from re-sale of mp3 players and digital camcorders to UK, Germany, Australia, Italy, and France. Electronics did not have fast paced trend like clothings.

I loved my small presence on web until I became Junior in UC Berkeley. The job required much time and labor: 1. Creating competition strategy, 2.  Building financial planning, 3. Designing and listing on 3rd party website, 4. Shipping, 5. Caring customer satisfaction and answering questions.

So I went back to my favorite section, business, in Barnes & Noble bookstore, and started reading books with hope of finding an alternative source of income. I found much interest in stock investment and brought many books home with me.. Started with value investing and technical analysis, I practiced what I learned from reading on virtual investing websites. When I had enough confidence, I transferred my fund to an actual online brokerage account.

During the very first month, I doubled my portfolio and tripled it by the second month.

Soon, I became over-confident. Investing in Wendy’s acquisition, and speculation in Jamba Juice dragged me down. I lost not only my profit from last two months, but also much of my original investment. I surely learned my lesson and went back to studying. I built experience and started to write my investment footage on a blog, www.simplyspeculation.com I recorded my move, and learned from mistakes. Now I believe in myself and have much more patience. Learning never stops.