Tumgik
#EVERYTHING WAS SO SLOW AND IT KEPT BUFFERING AND THE COMPUTER KEPT CRASHING
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
so sleep has taken you yet again
2K notes · View notes
mrs-denton · 3 years
Text
Sappy Paul Denton x OC Fanfic [Part 2]
The Start of the Collapse
After Paul’s departure, Bebe’s eyes struggled to shut. She laid in bed and kept glancing over at her phone occasionally, half-expecting something from Paul to come up. When she realized worrying was futile, she put the phone down and laid it down on its charging pad. She was worried, but she tried equilibrating those thoughts with reasonable positive ones because she was pregnant. She had to avoid as much stress as possible.
Staying up to write, as she did on sleepless nights like these, she scribbled her thoughts into her diary until she crashed. In the morning when she awoke, the unwelcome feeling of first trimester morning sickness sharply seized her from her slumber. She went to the bathroom to alleviate herself from the nausea.
Treating patients at the hospital she worked at, including those with the Grey Death, was dreary. Their spirits were broken and some of them got desperate. She wished she could divulge the truth behind the virus, or at least what she knew, but it would likely get her fired. She made sure to wear the most protective gear—respirator, face shield, gloves, a gown, and foot covers. Her health was going to have to become her top priority if she wanted a healthy baby.
Hours ebbed and flowed with moments of hectic excitement during rushes of patients and emergencies, but inched like slugs when things were slow and she caught herself worrying about Paul. She wondered what time it was in Hong Kong—surely, at least half a day ahead—and if he was alive. She thought about JC as well and didn’t want any harm to come to the Dentons, namely because JC was a cool person, but especially because she knew Paul would be devastated if his younger brother should fall. She scrubbed the pressing thoughts away from the walls of her mind—months of meditation had helped—and she continued to show up at work.
She checked her work emails to see if by some crazy chance, Paul had been daring enough to send her a message there. But of course not—he would never do something to endanger them, especially with the Aquinas net. After what felt like a 12-hour shift, Bebe returned home with takeout and quickly checked her computer. There, an email from Paul—or rather, his alias—was sent hours ago while she was still at work.
“Hey babe. I made it safely to Hong Kong, thank god. Good news—everything’s taken care of. My brother and I are gonna be fine. The bad news is that I’ll have to be living here for a few months as I recuperate, as I predicted. I was in pretty bad shape when I arrived, which is why it’s going to take longer for me to recover. Tong wants to keep me under supervision for a while. But I’m already feeling better.
Things are pretty tight in HK. I’m a wanted man here as well. I don’t think making a move right now is wise, but I can’t wait to see you again. I’ll keep you updated whenever I can. Try to take it easy and don’t worry about a thing—I’ll take care of it. I love you, and I’m always thinking about you. - P”
Bebe typed a reply.
“My darling, I’m glad you’re alright. I was worried about you, but I also knew you’d make it through this. Give the doctor my sincerest gratitude—he saved the man I love. I’m also happy J is fine. I completely understand if you need to stay there—in situations like this, a doctor’s supervision is necessary even after the treatment.
Let me know how things go. I want to be with you but things have to be just right. I love you, P. I hope you get better soon. I already miss you. Hugs and kisses. Yours,
- B”
Within the following day, Bebe received another email.
“Bebe—so much is happening right now. I don’t have much time, and neither does the world. Just bear with me. I’m going to be fine, I think, but my brother keeps unearthing more of this conspiracy. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know something will, and if it does, it’s going to be big. I can’t explain everything over the net, but I promise I will when I see you. I don’t know how much time there is and I know this sounds crazy but you’ll just have to trust me. Withdraw your savings now. There’s a high chance the net might crash and everything will be lost. Savings, records, and all sorts of info. Make sure you have plenty of food and supplies as well.
No matter what happens, I will find you! And that’s a promise. Just stay where you are. I love you so much more than you could ever imagine. - P”
Something inside Bebe told her Paul wasn’t lying. Everything Paul told her before and everything they had researched and pieced together made sense. She knew there could only be so much more to this story than most people knew and few had theorized about. After typing her obedient reply, Bebe set off for the bank and asked to withdraw the entirety of her account. Her salary provided her with decent savings she had accumulated over a few years.
But she wondered if the funny look the bank teller gave her was indicative of ignited suspicion. She knew it was. She smiled as the bank teller discussed the request with the manager, who gave her a poorly-disguised look of surprise. Who else but a shady person would just want to remove all their chits from the bank? Only somebody that knew something that most people didn’t know would act this way . . . She would just have to lie and say it was for a potential family emergency. Or that she’s just paranoid and that there are rumors the banks will fail soon. Hearsay type of stuff. But no, the latter would be too suspicious. Just go with the family emergency, she thought. 
Signing some papers that would let the federal revenue office know the reason for her massive withdrawal, she questioned just what the hell she was doing. She stopped for a while and glanced up at the bank teller, who was too busy counting chits to notice her. Bebe questioned herself for a bit--she was blindly obeying Paul’s orders, which wasn’t really a problem in and of itself, but how could she really know what was going on? Paul wouldn’t lie to her though. She knew that man for three years and he never lied. She just had to trust him. Worst case scenario, she’d be tracked down. But if nothing were to happen, she could just say she got worried sick for an ailing family member and took the money out to help with treatments.
“Forty-six-thousand, two-hundred and fifty-nine chits, ma’am,” the bank teller said, fat stacks of the electric green notes neatly sitting on the counter.
“Thank you so much,” she said, handing them the signed papers. “Here you go.”
She opened up her purse and filled it with the money, trying to act naturally. The teller and his manager looked at her strangely, as well as the clients behind her. She felt herself tense up.
“Thank you so much,” she said again. “Have a nice day.” She had a habit of being overly-polite sometimes.
And with that, she carried her loaded purse all the way to her car and drove home, the tunes blaring and the pedal to the metal. Suddenly, the music stopped. Could this be it?
She checked her phone and noticed there was no signal anywhere. The music stream was buffering continuously until it lost connectivity for good. Moving to the network settings, she confirmed there really was no net anymore. She couldn’t believe it at first, and then, she did.
Parking her car, she rushed inside the lobby of her apartment building. There were people standing outside with their cellphones in the air, trying to obtain signal, their faces scrunched in bewilderment. Glancing at the far end of two blocks over where one of the P-Mobile buildings was, people swarmed into the store to complain about their phone services.
“Miss, have you heard? The net’s gone black—disappeared,” the alarmed security guard at the reception said. “Everyone’s internet just shut off. Even the phones, TV, everything. We don’t know what’s going on.”
“Oh my god,” she said. “I’ll have to check mine out. Thank you.”
She went upstairs and rapidly scanned her nanokey to her door, eager to get inside. What would she do now?
She checked her computer. The internet was gone. No new emails from Paul, just the cached one from before. As she sat in her apartment, she heard her neighbors arguing loudly in desperation. Turning on the TV, she checked every channel, finding nothing but static—ultimately confirming everything Paul told her. Glancing outside her window and down at the congested streets, violence intensified.
After a few days to a week of the world descending into darkness, reports of the global net crashing and burning appeared on every newspaper. A national emergency was declared, and speculating specialists wondered who was responsible, pointing fingers at foreign governments and even “traitors” within the United States. The zealously religious stood outside every corner, wailing that it was the beginning of the Apocalypse, and the conspiracy theorists held meetings in their garages, claiming it was aliens. But soon enough, the Dentons were named. Bebe paid close attention.
“It is suspected that terrorist JC Denton and his brother, Paul Denton, are behind this massive communications collapse worldwide. We are slowly but surely receiving letters that confirm the internet shutdowns in every nation. Agencies are investigating the matter as best as they can.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. She just hoped the bank tellers didn’t put two and two together and decided to send somebody after her. After all, there was nothing suspicious about a woman withdrawing all her savings a few minutes before the world collapsed. But she sighed in relief when she knew that they wouldn’t have been able to pull up her personal information without the internet.
She thought about her family. Her dad had left them before she was even born, and her mother died of the Grey Death before Ambrosia was released. Her cousins were all living their lives as married people with children, and her only living aunt was old now. What would they think, though? What would they think if she were to run off with a “criminal”, a “terrorist”, a wanted man? Crises were meant to be times where family stuck together more, but with Bebe leaving . . . would they label her as selfish? Crazy? Bad? She only hoped that one day they would understand that Paul was not the person the media and the government was portraying him to be.
They didn’t even know she was pregnant. Engaged? Yes. They knew Paul and they liked him. But the media was a powerful weapon, especially now that the people’s only source of outside knowledge was funneled via the last remaining newspapers. They could twist and besmirch the Dentons as they wished, and people would buy it. Not everybody, though, as there were people who had been following the Juggernaut Collective—until it disbanded—and a few other rebel news disguised as tabloids and conspiracies. But alas, the perceptions of Bebe’s friends and family could definitely be warped against Paul. She had to be careful.
But most importantly, she had to figure out what the next steps in her life would be. If only she could talk to Paul. She wondered if she should keep going to work—part of her would think it better to disappear from society at once and wait until Paul came back, but the other part of her couldn’t just leave all those poor patients behind. She knew there were other doctors and nurses who would do a fine job—but could she really just disappear now? Did she still have to keep up her façade of normalcy? As if she weren’t the woman of the second-most-wanted man in the world right now?
She got up and started packing, hoping that at least sorting this out would bring her more clarity. What were her favorite clothes? What could she stand to leave behind? What would be useful? She took her favorite shoes as well as personal keepsakes and important documents, neatly enclosed in file folders and manilla envelopes, and put them in a suitcase. Most of the money was also stored there. Then, glancing at her desk, she took note of her journal.
How could she leave this behind? She had to take it. Unless, of course, she wanted to be that mysterious woman who left her revealing memoirs in a secret diary. She considered the thought briefly and then took the journal, the pages automatically splitting upon a section with a dried red rose that had been stamped between the weight of the pages. It was the first flower Paul ever gave her. She instantly smiled as she felt the crispy, dark garnet petals on her fingertips, her mind going back to when the petals were bright as fresh blood and smooth like velvet.
3 notes · View notes
noobsomeexagerjunk · 3 years
Text
Gift Horse
The last response Emma gave to an invitation from her sister was “Next time.” This year, Jane has invited Emma to celebrate Christmas with the rest of her family in the hospital. What if Emma went this time?
(AU wherein Jane survives the car crash; this part contains an illustration)
part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4
“Hello everybody! My name is Markiplier, and welcom—“ Buffer, “—e back to Cuphead!”
Tim Houston was seated in one of the chairs in the hospital room, earphones plugged into his ears and smartphone. The hospital wifi was clearly slow, which irritated the boy.
"Okay, so this is the end of it! I think. I'm not one hundred percent sure—"
Knocking from the door made Tim pause his video, removing his gadgets and heading to the door.
The door opened before Tim could, revealing his dad and his long-awaited Aunt Emma.
"We're back!" Tom announced with as much joy as he could muster from his bruised face, "Tim, this is your Aunt Emma,"
Aunt Emma had quite a resemblance to Tim's mother. They had the same eyes, hazel with a heavy gray tint that manifested the lack of agency in their lives. Their brown hair was of the same shade.
Aunt Emma was more tan than Tim imagined her to be, chalking that up to the sun in Guatemala. She strutted her winterwear with whites, blacks, and grays, so unlike his mother’s style, which was comparable to the Biblical Joseph’s rainbow dress.
"Hi, Tim!" Her voice was deeper than his mother's, "I'm so glad to finally meet you!" yet they had the same inflection in their speech.
Tim went to embrace her, which she received willingly.
“Ow!” He suddenly blurted out, making Emma back away immediately.
“Shi-Shoot! Tim, I’m so sorry!”
“It’s alright, Aunt Emma. Bruises take a while to heal, after all.”
“I’m gonna head out and get us dinner,” Tom cut in with a heavy tone, hand already on the knob.
“Oh, I could come with you,” Emma volunteered.
“No, Tim’s been needing an extra pair of hands for far too long,” Tom opened the door, “and you two should bond. It’s Christmas, right?”
SLAM!
The two blinked.
“Mom’s asleep,” Tim said, pointing to his mother’s hospital bed.
The gesture immediately made Emma move, quickly placing the bags she carried into the room on top of the mini-refrigerator, then proceeding in a jittery but hesitant manner towards the hospital bed.
Emma glanced at Tim, who walked behind her. Tim had one black eye, bandages on his left cheek, as well as his hands. Standing still made her notice his very slight limp in walking.
“You alright?” She asked the boy in concern.
“What do you mean?” He asked, finally standing next to her.
“You know, if you don’t wanna move so much, you don’t have to, alright?”
“I know, but the nurse said that a little walking in the room would get the feeling in my legs back,”
“Are your legs numb?”
“No, but they feel like sprains when I move sometimes.”
“I think you should sit down then,” Emma pointed to the chair closest to the hospital bed.
“Okay,” Tim then proceeded to do so, clearly tired and eager to pick up where he left off before his aunt’s arrival.
Emma faced the hospital bed, now reasonably close to her sister in a long time.
The bed was elevated, with Jane Perkins on top of it under disheveled blankets like a plastic Christmas tree. The tubes pierced her like electric wires, the bubbling of the fluid within them akin to the sparkle of Christmas lights. There were bandages all over her, mostly on the left of her body, reminiscent of Emma’s trademark badly-wrapped Christmas presents.
Jane’s hair was already beginning to gray, bags under her eyes almost as dark and defined as Emma’s own. Her skin was paler than how Emma remembered it, patches of red from clearly healing bruises.
She was asleep, “dreaming” as my late grandmothers would have put it.
“She looks kinda peaceful,” She thought out loud.
“What was that, Aunt Emma?!” And it was loud enough for Tim to pause the buffering Markiplier Let’s Play.
“Oh, i-it’s nothing, Tim,”
Tim peeked behind Emma to see his mother. Still asleep.
“...then who were you talking to?”
“Um—“
“Did you see a ghost?”
“W-What?”
“Kinda like those Christmas Carol stories where that greedy Scrooge guy meets ghosts and learns to love Christmas?”
“Well, I love Christmas," She lied. A little. "So that can’t be right.”
“Then, why don’t you come over?”
Emma paused.
"Tim—"
Tim restrained himself, sighing.
“It’s the really big Holidays when Mom tells me something about you,” Tim kept his gadgets again, “Is it true that the best way to view the stars is from up a mountain?”
It was true. Hiking in Guatemala had something special Hatchetfield could not offer. Guatemala was an escape where all the right roads were. Upon those mountains were the sights of starry nights, the kind of shit master painters famously felt dreamy about.
Emma didn’t have the strength to reply.
“Aunt Emma?”
“...can you repeat your question again, Tim?”
“T-the stars,” He was looked directly at her familiar eyes, “Do they look pretty from the mountain tops?”
Emma did not reply right away, heading towards her bags, pulling out that cursed doll she bought for Tim.
“It honestly depends, um, how a-and whether you seriously wanna get up there,” She said, box tightly held in her hands, “The stars won’t be so pretty if you don’t really want to see them.”
Tim got up, curious about the box.
“In my experience,” Emma turned to face the boy, “they remind me how little I—er, we, actually are.”
Tim stared at the box.
“Is that for me?”
Emma didn’t exactly wrap the doll at all.
“Well, y-yeah!” She crouched a little, “don’t tell your Dad I gave this to you right away, but—“
“But he’ll find out anyway.” Tim took the box, Emma willingly letting him do so. “How will this fit in my bag?!”
“Okay okay,” Emma tried to calm the boy down. “But I’m still giving it to you now, okay?”
“Okay,” Emma then left Tim to play with the doll on the floor, going back to the hospital bed.
Tim stared at the rather plain plastic packaging, writing of note being “Whippy Whinny Horsey”, “Whinny's eyes glow!”, and “WHIP IT UP!”
Tim found it cool how the parts of the doll had to be assembled together like a puzzle. One thing he and his Mom had in common was this partiality to playing with pieces, whatever those pieces may be.
However, Jane liked her puzzles abstract, where she picked apart people and their psyches. Tim took from his father a liking to playing with more hands-on things, like machines and computers.
He began pulling out the pieces, attaching the right leg, then left arm, followed by the left leg, and then right arm. The stitch marks were clearly aesthetic; the pieces attached seamlessly. This fact was very pleasing to the eight-year-old. Tim deduced magnets were at play.
Tim’s busy joy halted when the head wouldn’t attach, squeaking as it landed on the floor. The same happened with the tail.
He kept trying. The horse had to be whole. His attempts kept on for some time.
On the other hand, Emma was still standing there, glancing at her sister, to the window, to the TV, to the bathroom door. Her staring cycled and cycled, until shifting from her peripheral vision caught her attention.
It was Jane, and she was stirring awake, every movement making Emma freeze in response.
Everything was going to change once she waked. Emma felt that deep in her frantic thoughts, with memories and unprocessed feelings rushing back to her like the flashbacks she witnessed from her brother-in-law on the way to that very room.
The talk was inevitable.
Jane's right eye opened slowly (the left was in bandages), all the color drained from her irises. Emma held her breath once their pupils seemed directed at each other.
“...Emma?”
Her tone was in great disbelief, despite how weak she sounded.
“H-Hey, Jane. I guess I finally came, huh?”
Tumblr media
4 notes · View notes
wickedsingularity · 5 years
Text
Emergency Landing [one-shot]
Fandom: Star Trek Pairings/characters: Jim Kirk x reader (but not really), Hikaru Sulu, Spock, Leonard McCoy, Nyota Uhura, Montgomery Scott, M'Benga Words: 3987 Warnings: Hypothermia, bumps and bruises, blood
Prompt/summary: On the way home from a conference, and just a few hours before Jim's birthday, their shuttlepod hits an ion storm.
Note: This was supposed to be one of the xmas stories, but I felt it didn't quite fit, so I changed it to fit AOS Jim's birthday instead. The story is probably not what people are looking for on here, but it's the kind of story I like to write, more substance. And it came easy to me (the hardest part was finding out what dishes to use for rations) and I'm proud of it. So, sorry (not sorry) it's not a fluffy lovey dovey smutty sugary cliché-fic.
Tumblr media
"I'm looking forward to a nice, long sonic shower and a night in my own bed," I said as I altered our course a fraction, hoping it would shave a few minutes off our estimated travel time.
"Me too," Jim agreed. "The temperature in that hall was awful."
Jim and I had been to a conference on Tellar Prime about advancement in warp drives and the impact it has on the Prime Directive. Scotty decided it was better to send his assistant chief engineer instead of going himself, and when Jim told me Starfleet made him go too because of his tendency to disregard the Prime Directive and to act as a buffer between the Tellarites and Andorians if necessary, I didn't hesitate to agree to go in Scotty's place. It hadn't been a vacation by any means. Jim off in diplomatic meetings with other species' captains and representatives and me attending one lecture after another, speaking to the best engineers and professors currently available in the Federation. But we attended a few lectures together, and it was nice to travel somewhere with him and relax in a giant bed in a luxurious hotel rather than the smaller and harder Starfleet beds.
The Tellarites liked temperatures a lot warmer than what us humans were used to on a regular basis. It made me sticky and sweaty and I felt like a magnet for all the dust and dirt in the environment there. Though I had taken a water shower every day, nothing really felt as cleansing as a sonic one.
"How long until we reach our rendezvous point?" Jim asked, swivelling his chair around.
I swiped the panel in front of me. "Three hours twenty-six minutes."
"Too long to wait to eat."  Jim got up and I heard him rummage around in a compartment for rations. "Do you want meatloaf with peas and mashed potatoes or deconstructed fish tacos?"
I frowned, checking the sensors, I thought I saw something. "That's all the options?"
"Sadly, yes. We need to restock."
"Let's have the meatloaf then." I couldn't see anything on the sensors, deciding it had been Tellarite dust in my eyes. "Warm it up for me?"
"If you activate the autopilot and come back here and eat with me, sweetheart." He already had one ration warmed up.
I took one last glance at the long-range sensors, still finding nothing, and then activated the autopilot. The second ration was done, and Jim set them up on the seat next to him along with two bottles of water. "One last dinner date before duty calls?" I asked.
He looked up and threw me that blinding smile of his. "Something like that."
I sat down on the other side of the two lightly steaming bowls of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. "Real romantic. In a dull shuttlepod. Dirty and sweaty. With rations and stale water."
"Computer, play some slow jazz." There was a beep, and then the sound of a slow and soothing saxophone filled the shuttlepod. "Better?"
I leaned over to give him a quick kiss. "It was already perfect because I'm with you."
"Trying to get in my pants, Lieutenant?"
"I don't have to try to get in your pants, Captain." Raising one eyebrow, I reached for my bowl and fork and took a bite, swallowing with a scowl. "Need to install replicators in our shuttlepods. The new shuttlepod classes are getting them, so why not."
"The captain approves of this idea." Jim too picked sceptically at his meatloaf.
Even if the food wasn't all that good, it was still full of nutrients and we dug in, talking about the conference, the jazz in the background. It was as romantic as it could get in a small shuttlepod. Until suddenly the entire craft tilted, the emergency lights started blinking red, and a klaxon replaced the music. What little was left of my food covered the back of the seat I banged into and Jim's bowl clattered to the floor.
We both scrambled to our feet, the craft tilting to the other side, and we grabbed onto whatever we could to make it to the controls. I plopped down in the seat and there was definitely something on sensors now.
"Ion storm," I said, raising my voice over the sound of the red alert. "A big one."
"Shields at 70 percent," Jim said. "Warp engine is offline. Impulse engine is online. Life support on auxiliary power." The shuttlepod began shaking violently. "Shields at 57 percent. 40 percent. We need to land!"
"There's a planet about four and a half million kilometres away. Uninhabited. Class P."
"Rerouting power to the shields, laying in course."
The twenty-minute flight was long. We cleared the ion storm after seven minutes and was able to drop the shields and save what little power was left, but the warp engines would not come back online, and impulse engines were hanging on by a thread. Life support would not last us until we reached the rendezvous point. I had already sent out a general distress call and was trying to hail the Enterprise while Jim tried his best to keep the engines online long enough to reach the planet. If we could at least get into the atmosphere, gravity would pull us down and we could use thrusters to hopefully bring us to a not too disastrous landing.
"Reaching atmosphere in two minutes," Jim announced.
"Shields are up."
"Brace yourself."
The shuttlepod rattled and shook, it's nose tilting more and more forward until we were hurtling through the atmosphere like a flaming arrow.
"Hull temperature rising," I warned. "Nearing critical. Rerouting life support to shields."
"Almost there!"
Sweat was dripping down my nose from the heat inside the pod. I kept my eyes locked on the shields and temperature levels, not even knowing what more power I could give to the shields to keep us from burning up. But just as I thought I would faint from the heat, we cleared the atmosphere and saw the icy and snowy surface coming closer and closer. The shuttlepod stopped rattling, and I began scanning for a good place to land. Not that we had much to say in the way of navigating, impulse engines were completely dead now.
"Try to land here," I said, entering a set of coordinates for Jim to navigate after.
He activated the thrusters, but it felt like they did nothing. "I'll just try and slow us down as much as I can wherever this piece of metal decides to go."
The surface was coming closer and closer. I knew it was a matter of seconds, but it felt like an eternity before Jim managed to get the pod a bit more horizontal just before it crashed into the snow and hurtled forwards. It sounded like the hull was being pulled apart and I was thrown back and forth and side to side and then –
Silence.
Tumblr media
It was cold. So cold. A shiver ran through me. Everything hurt. I opened my eyes and blinked a few times. Then I carefully pushed myself up from the console with a pained groan. I took a moment to take stock of my body, moving my limbs a little bit. Nothing seemed broken, but I would definitely be colourful with various bruises in a bit. Something on my forehead was stinging though, and I touched my fingers to it. They came away red with almost dry blood.
"Jim?" My voice was croaky. I looked around and saw him hanging sideways over the arm of the chair, unconscious. Ignoring the pain everywhere and shivering from the cold and my heart beating hard at seeing Jim like that, I got up and stepped over, checking his pulse. A breath of relief left me. His pulse was strong if a bit slow. Carefully, I moved him into a sitting position and laid my hands on his cold cheeks. No blood on his face, thankfully, or anywhere else that I could see. "Jim?" No response. "Jim! Wake up!"
He inhaled sharply and his eyes blinked. I immediately planted a kiss on his forehead and laughed a bit hysterically.
"You okay?" he asked, closing his eyes again.
I sat down on the console in front of him. "Apart from a few bumps and bruises, yeah. What about you? Anything broken?"
"Doesn't feel like it." He looked at me and sat straighter, alarm in his blue eyes. "You're bleeding!"
I touched my hand to my forehead again and noticed that whatever was there had started bleeding again. I hadn't even felt the fresh blood run down my face as I was waking Jim. "I guess I am."
"Don't move." Jim stood up, winced a bit and then went straight to the compartment with the medkits. I looked around as he did. The front windows were cracked, the bulkhead was dented on the entire right side of the pod as if we had scraped a pointy piece of rock. Many compartments had opened and rations and equipment laid scattered.
Jim came back again, holding his side, and put the medkit down on the console next to me. He pulled out a piece of gauze, cleaning up some of the blood, before picking up a dermal regenerator for the wound. With every move he made, there was a pained frown on his face and he did most of the work with his left arm, but I didn't say anything as I felt the wound closing up, stinging less and less. He then pulled out a medical tricorder, but I pushed his hands away.
"No need for that, I'm fine now. But you're in pain." I moved to lift his shirt, but he pushed my hands away now.
"Just a bruise, from bumping around in the chair probably. It'll be fine. We need to get our bearings and warm up before we freeze to death."
My teeth had indeed started to chatter. "Right. And set up an automated distress call. Enterprise will have realised we're not going to show up by now and start looking."
Both of us moved a bit hesitantly at first, the cold slowed us down. I tried to find some power to send out a distress call, but everything was completely dead. Jim was pulling out emergency kits, tossing a thermal jacket my way before donning one himself.
"I think we should move out and try to find a cave. There's got to be one. Can't start a fire in here," he said, putting the rest of the rations in a backpack.
"Okay. I'm going to detach the distress beacon and take it with us. See if I can get it working."
Soon, we had packed everything we needed, holstered our phasers and donned the headlamps, wrestled the door open and faced the icy, windy and dark night. We both pulled out tricorders and Jim decided on a course. "This way, I think."
The trek was long and it was made slow by having to move through ten inches of snow. Our boots and pants were not suited for this environment and I felt my toes grow colder and colder with each step. The cold wind made my cheeks and eyes sting, tears falling and almost freezing on my skin. While the cold also made me feel less pain from all my bumps and bruises, I noticed Jim sometimes stiffened up and favoured his right side, his hands rubbing at the side of his stomach. I knew better than to ask about it right now, it would have to wait until we found shelter. And about an hour of walking later, a cave finally appeared in front of us.
"No life forms inside," he shouted over the wind and looked at me, cocking his head toward the mouth of the cave as if inviting me into his house.
I nodded, and we walked inside. The sting of the wind disappeared and the further in we got, the fainter the sound became. Only a faint howling in the distance. I looked around for something to use as kindling as we ventured deeper, but there was nothing but icicles and rocks, the cave just as barren as the landscape.
"I think this is deep enough," I said, coming to a stop, looking down at my tricorder. "Any further and the beacon will be out of range."
Jim agreed and we began setting our things down and wiping snow off ourselves. Then I ordered him to sit down.
"I've seen you wince in pain too many times now, let me look at you." I glared at him in that way I knew he understood it was pointless to argue. I knelt in front of him and lifted his shirt. His entire right side was a flower field of bruises. I gently touched him right below the chest and he shied away with a gasp. "Right. If that's not a broken rib, I don't know what is. You get started on this instead, and I'll get us warm." I dumped the beacon in front of him.
"Bossy," Jim mumbled as I rummaged around in his bag for a pain reliever. When I approached him with the hypospray, his playful grin fell. "No."
"Yes." And before he could get away from behind the beacon and move, I pressed the hypospray to his neck.
"Thanks," he then said a few seconds later, as I'm sure some of the pain went away.
I nodded and started to gather some rocks to warm up with my phaser. And then I took the beacon from Jim and continued trying to fix the damage. Jim moved over to the so-called fire and silence filled the cave.
When my hands were so cold I couldn't feel the textural difference between a metal screw and a piece of fabric, I finally got the beacon to power up. I set it to transmit the same distress call we had sent out earlier and wandered over to Jim who held out a water bottle for me.
"Warm up a bit, sweetheart. All we can do now is try to keep warm and wait."
I took a large swig from the bottle and then sat down next to him with my boots as close to the rocks as possible. Jim laid his arm around me and pulled me closer to his uninjured side. Even though he was probably almost as cold as I was, he made me feel warmer, and I leaned my head on his shoulder, rubbing my hands together.
"How's the rib?"
"Still there. But not as painful. Thank you." He kissed the top of my head.
"I can't believe our stupid shuttlepod broke down just a few damn hours before your birthday," I muttered. "On a class P planet."
"That's my birthday for you, it's jinxed." Jim chuckled and winced in pain.
I blew him a raspberry. "It's not jinxed, dumbass. But I had the chef prepare a birthday dinner for when we got back. I bet Bones and Spock are enjoying it instead right now. And gloating."
"You had him prepare for the entire crew? Were you going to throw me a surprise party? You know how I feel about those."
"No. Just you and me. You said we were going to be off duty when we got back and I wanted to pretend to have a normal birthday for you. Shit just seemed to happen every year before this, something always came up. I was so sure this year would be quiet and uneventful."
"Told you it was jinxed. It could have been worse, though. There could have been drakoulias here."
I blew him a raspberry again before silence fell over us. The day was catching up to me, and I felt drowsy. My head dropped down and I started, making Jim chuckle and wince in pain again. But he got up and pulled out the two thermal blankets we had in the backpack and held one out to me.
"Get some rest. I'll keep watch, just in case."
"It's uninhabited. No life forms. It would be safe for you to rest too. And it looks like you need another hypospray," I protested, but I was already settling down on the cold ground and pulling the blanket over me.
Jim moved the distress beacon closer, wrapped the second blanket around himself like a cape, sat down next to the beacon and laid his communicator on the ground. Then he spread his legs, waving me over. I crawled over and settled between his them, using his thigh as a pillow and draped the blanket over myself and his legs. "Just in case. And in case Enterprise hails us. And it feels like I'm better off sitting. Sleep, love. I'll wake you if I need to rest too."
Feeling the heat from Jim creep into me and his fingers gently combing through my hair, I fell asleep quickly. But it was a restless sleep and I woke up what felt like every other minute, feeling colder and colder every time. At one point, I felt Jim shivering slightly. I looked up and saw his head had fallen back to the cave wall, eyes closed and mouth open.
I sat up carefully, trying not to wake him and reached for my phaser to stun the rocks again. Jim blue eyes were open a fraction when I turned back to him. "You're shivering and your lips are turning blue. Please take another hypospray and lie down with me," I ordered.
He didn't even hesitate. He bent his head back and let me press the pain reliever to his neck and then we laid on top of my blanket and wrapped our limbs around each other, and I pulled his blanket tight around us.
"You sleep now, and I'll stay awake."
Again, he didn't even hesitate. He pressed a pair of ice-cold lips to mine, then nuzzled into my neck.
I don't how long I managed to stay awake for, or how long I had been asleep when a sound invaded my consciousness and pulled me back to the cave. Footsteps were coming closer. I was distracted for a fraction of a second of Jim shivering and breathing raggedly next to me, but the echoing sound of a tumbling rock made me grab the phaser lying near my head and hold it towards the mouth of the cave, desperately whispering for Jim to wake up.
Whoever or whatever was coming, came with bright lights that blinded me. "Who's there?" I called out.
"No need to point your phaser at us, Lieutenant."
"Sulu?"
"To the rescue!"
The light was close enough now that I could see Spock, Sulu and Bones. The latter took in the scene in front of him for a second, then strode over with the medical tricorder already out. "Figures that the two of you managed to crash-land on a deserted planet and almost freeze to death while just flying home from a damn conference."
I untangled myself from Jim's trembling arms, and that finally made him open his eyes. "Check him first," I said to the doctor. "Please."
Sulu and Spock came over and helped Jim sit up. Though he was awake, he didn't seem very conscious of what was happening around him and he looked like he was too cold to notice the broken rib. Bones ran the tricorder up and down his body, a frown on his face. I knelt next to them, too worried about how much he was shivering and how blue his lips were.
"His temperature is at 30 Celsius. And he's got a number of bruises and a broken rib and frostbites. We need to get him to sickbay immediately."
Spock whipped out his communicator. "Spock to Enterprise."
"Did you find them?" Uhura's voice came at the other end.
"Yes. Are Commander Scott able to get a transporter lock yet?"
"Negative," Scotty said. "Ye have to get them outta that cave."
"You're not hypothermic yet," Bones suddenly said. I hadn't even noticed that he had scanned me, being too worried about Jim. "That cut on your forehead needs tending too, you didn't do a good job sealing it up, and there's a number of bruises and frostbites on you too. But nothing urgent."
"Can Captain Kirk be moved?" Spock asked.
"Carefully, yes," Bones replied. The two of them got on either side of the captain and pulled him to his feet, and laid his arms over their shoulders. I helped Sulu pack up our stuff and quickly caught up with the trio slowly making their way towards the howling wind. Jim's head was lolling, he had clearly lost consciousness again. Fear gripped at my heart and the walk out of the cave seemed to take fifty times as long as when Jim and I walked inside.
Finally, Spock and Bones stopped. "Spock to Enterprise. Five to beam up directly to sickbay."
As soon as the howling, bitingly cold wind was replaced by warmth and a sterile smell, several things happened at once. Bones began barking out orders while getting Jim onto a biobed. Sulu took the distress beacon from me and he and Spock hurried out of the room. Nurses ran around with blankets and trays of vials and equipment. One of them herded me onto a biobed too far from Jim, and Bones drew the curtains around his bed so I couldn't even see what was going on. I moved to walk over there, but the nurse pushed on my shoulder and forced me down and put a blanket over me.
"Jim," I tried.
"The captain is being treated," the nurse said. "And you need to get your temperature up."
I glared up at him, but he ignored it. I knew he was right. So, I stopped fighting and tried to relax onto the bed while Doctor M'Benga came over and began scanning me with various devices. He and the nurse exchanged a few words I didn't catch, and then M'Benga began retreating the cut on my forehead and the nurse gave me a hypospray, and that was the last thing I remembered.
Tumblr media
A few days later, I came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel and feeling clean for the first time since before Jim and I left for the conference, it had taken several sonic showers. I had been discharged from Doctor M'Benga's care after just a couple of hours, the cut on my forehead healed properly, frostbites treated and most bruises gone. But Bones kept Jim for two whole days. But then he was finally let out, given a clean bill of health, and under strict orders to take a couple of days off. Which, I figured, is how he had time to set this up.
There, on the table, was the birthday dinner I had asked the chef to make for us.
"Jim? What is this?"
He stood next to the table, looking proud of himself. "I guess my birthday is kind of over, but you seemed disappointed it didn't go the way you had planned. And it sounded really good to have a quiet birthday dinner with just the two of us. So... I did this." His blue eyes were bright and his smile even brighter.
I strode over and wrapped my arms around his neck, looking up into his happy face. "You really are something, James Tiberius. I love you."
"I love you too." He leaned down and gave me a quick kiss, lips so warm and soft.
"And happy belated, handsome. Let me go change and we can eat."
"Do you have to? It'll just take me longer to unwrap you later."
I slipped out of his grasp and hurried away to the bedroom area. "You gotta work for it, Captain," I looked back over my shoulder and winked at him.
Tumblr media
Permanent tags: @imamotherfuckingstar-lord @geeksareunique @iguess-theyre-mymess @neeadinghugs @earinafae @mattmurdocksgirl @joulien @imaginesofdreams @brewsthespirit-blog @lemonlime799 @reading-in-moonlight Star Trek tags: @feelmyroarrrr @somethingwitty-somethingsweet
Tag lists are open! Just DM, ask, reblog or reply if you want on or off! I can add you to any list, no matter how specific!
243 notes · View notes
samuelfields · 6 years
Text
How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt
In late 1999 I had my Bitcoin moment. I was a 22 year old first year analyst working on the international trading floor at a major investment bank. The internet boom was peaking and I had just gotten my year end stub bonus of $20,000. Although the $20,000 magically turned into $12,000 after paying New York City taxes, for the first time in my life I no longer felt poor.
I took $3,000 of my bonus proceeds and invested in a company called Vertical Computer Systems Inc (VCSY). I didn’t know much about it. All I remember was that it was a China internet play with a telephone dial pad as its home page. I was on the Emerging Markets team and spent all my time looking at Asian and Eastern European plays. Surely, VCSY was going to be the next Yahoo!
In a couple weeks, VCSY went from around $3 to $6, did an inexplicable 20-for-1 stock split and then went up to around $9. In other words, within six months it went from $3 to $180 pre-split and I had 1,000 shares.
The stock’s 6,000% move was ridiculous as everybody I knew on the Street started piling into the name. I eventually got out of the stock at around $156 a share, netting a cool $153,000.
Realizing VCSY was 95% luck and 5% being in the right place at the right time, I sat on the cash for a couple years, watching the NASDAQ implode before finally getting the guts to use all my after-tax proceeds to buy a $580,000 condo in San Francisco with a $464,000 mortgage in 2003.
In retrospect, I should have kept hunting for new VCSY’s every year. However, while my wealth continued to grow, I was too afraid to lose even small amounts of money. The dotcom crash had scarred my investing psyche because I personally knew many people who lost both their jobs and their paper fortunes. The subsequent housing bubble crash was even more devastating because so many more people were affected.
If only there was a system I could follow that would give me the confidence to consistently swing for the fences without losing my shirt.
Investing In Speculative Investments Without Losing Everything
We know we can get rich by gaining Maximum Exposure to risk assets in a bull market. We also know we can get rich by building a business where we own all the equity. The downside with leveraging up to buy property and stocks or forsaking a steady paycheck to start a company is the potential to lose A LOT of money and time.
What if there was a way to strike it rich without taking any risk? I never really thought about this possibility until a reader brought it up. Previously, I’ve always just allocated between 5% – 10% of my investable assets and swung for the fences.
Here’s what DoneAt53 wrote to another reader who is worried about current market valuations:
Start going to cash. Find a long term CD that pays 2.5% or toss money into savings bonds. With the proceeds buy S&P500 options. With 100K, you can use the $2,500 – $4,000 interest, depending on your risk free choice to purchase Dec 2018 265 options for 1400 each. Two will cost you $2,800 and you’ll have a 53% participation ratio, buy a third for a total of $4,200 and sell 2, Dec 2018 295’s for $200 credit each. You’ll have a 78% participation ratio up to 295 (11%) and 26% participation ratio above that and it will cost $3800 of your interest.
If the market tanks, you lost the interest on your money and very little of if any of the principle. If Mr. Market keeps going up, you get a nice percentage of the gain designed at your comfort level with (almost) none of the risk.
Understanding the options jargon is less important than understanding this concept:
With your risk-free investment income, invest in the most speculative investments that have the potential to give you the highest returns. Even if you lose your entire investment, you will never go to the poor house because you will never lose principal.
Examples Of Speculative Investments
* DoneAt53 discusses buying out-of-the-money options that provide higher returns on a specific stock or index versus buying the actual stock or index. The downside is that if your options expire out of the money, they are worthless.
* Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin are the hottest speculative investments at the moment and finally attracting mainstream capital. Bitcoin could easily collapse by 80% next week, but it could also continue to go up multiple times because of a surge in liquidity and world-wide adoption. You can by your slice of Bitcoin on an exchange like Coinbase.com.
* Internet and tech stocks in emerging markets. Buying the Googles, Facebooks, Ubers, Apples, of XYZ emerging markets is a straightforward investment thesis. Buying the next “Yahoo of China” was my investment thesis in 1999 when I bought VCSY. I continued this thought process in 2013 when I wrote, Should I Buy Chinese Stocks? Sina, Baidu, and RenRen have all done really well since.
* Angel investing where you provide seed stage capital is another way to earn massive returns. The problem with angel investing is that companies often have a minimum of $25,000 – $100,000. That’s unaffordable for most people, especially if you need to make $25,000- $100,000 in risk-free income. I’m no longer angel investing partly because of bad experiences. But if the minimums come down, I might do so again.
* The crappiest small cap IPO that has gotten bludgeoned since going public for whatever reason. One example is Blue Apron that IPOed at $10 and fell all the way down to $2.97/share. I decided to pick $10,400 worth up at $3.15 a share. They found a new CEO, lowered guidance, and fired a bunch of people since. The bar is low now and the stock shot up to $4.15 at one point. I hope they get bought out.
Another example is Snapchat. It went IPO at $17, got foolishly hyped up to $27/share and then disappointed repeatedly in its quarterly results and fell to $12 a share. The problem with my SNAP purchase at $12.24 is that even at current levels, it’s still valued at $18 billion. It’s harder to move rapidly or get purchased for a large premium when the company is already huge.
The recent crap IPO I missed was Funko (FNKO), a maker of toys. They priced the stock at $12, gapped up to $19.93 and closed that week at $7, all before reporting results. Now the stock is up 40%. You’ve really got to pay attention if you want to capture such opportunities.
* Original works of art from unknown artists who you think have the potential to go mainstream. If they don’t go mainstream, at least you can enjoy the work.
Speculative Investing Framework Example
To provide clarity, I’ve created a Speculative Investing Framework. The person below has $650,000 of low-risk capital returning $28,000 a year, or 4.3%. He proceeds to invest $28,000 in various speculative investments with a potential return of -75% to +625%.
The example has several assumptions that should be noted: 1) the low risk income is not required for survival, 2) rental income may or may not be considered low risk, 3) the time frame for the potential returns is unknown or up to the investor to decide, and 4) to deploy such a strategy, you must save aggressively and stop spending like a knucklehead, and 5) it’s up to you to figure out what else beyond CDs and muni bonds are considered low risk and invest accordingly.
Even if this person loses his entire $28,000 of low risk income in speculative investments, he’ll be fine. The key is to not get carried away by cutting into principal, much like a gambler does when he pulls out his wallet or goes to the ATM machine for more cash.
It’s Hard To Get Rich Quickly Investing In An Index Fund
Although earning a 16%+ return on your S&P 500 index fund in 2017 is excellent, it’s a relatively slow way to earn a fortune since the stock market averages around 8% – 9% a year long term. After all, one of my motto’s is achieving financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
If you want to get rich quicker, it’s worth carving out 5% – 10% of your investable assets and/or reinvesting your risk-free income into speculative investments that complement your plain vanilla investments each year. Just make sure your risk capital is capital you can afford to lose, because you will lose quite often. Also make sure you have a comfortable cash buffer to provide for you and your family in case Armageddon strikes again.
Because I hate losing money, I decided to invest time in my 30s building a lifestyle business. I figured worst case, I’d become a better communicator and learn something about the online publishing world. I knew I would not regret putting in an extra effort while I still had the energy.
My problem now is that at age 40 I’ve hit an inflection point where time is much more valuable than money. The desire for more time is why I’m happily farming out my capital to people who want to spend their careers looking at investments. It’s the same reason why I’m highly amenable to hiring a property manager the next time my tenants give me hell.
If you are lucky enough to strike it rich with a speculative investment, do your best to turn the funny money into a real asset that generates stable cash flow. If not, use some or all of your lucky winnings to pay for a better life.
Barring a natural disaster, the $580,000 property I bought in 2003 with my VCSY money will still be there generating $4,000+/month in rent forever. And if not, maybe I’ll make it into the Financial Samurai office or have my parents or sister live in it for free one day.
Remember: You only need to get rich once! Turn your lucky break into a gift that keeps on giving.
Related: Investment Ideas At The Top Of The Market
Readers, how much of your capital do you allocate to highly speculative investments? Do you have any big wins? If so, how did you spend or reinvest the proceeds? Note: On 9/25/2017, a condo unit next to mine with a similar layout sold for $1,360,000. 
The post How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt appeared first on Financial Samurai.
from Finance https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-to-invest-in-speculative-investments-like-bitcoin-without-huge-losses/ via http://www.rssmix.com/
0 notes
ronaldmrashid · 6 years
Text
How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt
In late 1999 I had my Bitcoin moment. I was a 22 year old first year analyst working on the international trading floor at a major investment bank. The internet boom was peaking and I had just gotten my year end stub bonus of $20,000. Although the $20,000 magically turned into $12,000 after paying New York City taxes, for the first time in my life I no longer felt poor.
I took $3,000 of my bonus proceeds and invested in a company called Vertical Computer Systems Inc (VCSY). I didn’t know much about it. All I remember was that it was a China internet play with a telephone dial pad as its home page. I was on the Emerging Markets team and spent all my time looking at Asian and Eastern European plays. Surely, VCSY was going to be the next Yahoo!
In a couple weeks, VCSY went from around $3 to $6, did an inexplicable 20-for-1 stock split and then went up to around $9. In other words, within six months it went from $3 to $180 pre-split and I had 1,000 shares.
The stock’s 6,000% move was ridiculous as everybody I knew on the Street started piling into the name. I eventually got out of the stock at around $156 a share, netting a cool $153,000.
Realizing VCSY was 95% luck and 5% being in the right place at the right time, I sat on the cash for a couple years, watching the NASDAQ implode before finally getting the guts to use all my after-tax proceeds to buy a $580,000 condo in San Francisco with a $464,000 mortgage in 2003.
In retrospect, I should have kept hunting for new VCSY’s every year. However, while my wealth continued to grow, I was too afraid to lose even small amounts of money. The dotcom crash had scarred my investing psyche because I personally knew many people who lost both their jobs and their paper fortunes. The subsequent housing bubble crash was even more devastating because so many more people were affected.
If only there was a system I could follow that would give me the confidence to consistently swing for the fences without losing my shirt.
Investing In Speculative Investments Without Losing Everything
We know we can get rich by gaining Maximum Exposure to risk assets in a bull market. We also know we can get rich by building a business where we own all the equity. The downside with leveraging up to buy property and stocks or forsaking a steady paycheck to start a company is the potential to lose A LOT of money and time.
What if there was a way to strike it rich without taking any risk? I never really thought about this possibility until a reader brought it up. Previously, I’ve always just allocated between 5% – 10% of my investable assets and swung for the fences.
Here’s what DoneAt53 wrote to another reader who is worried about current market valuations:
Start going to cash. Find a long term CD that pays 2.5% or toss money into savings bonds. With the proceeds buy S&P500 options. With 100K, you can use the $2,500 – $4,000 interest, depending on your risk free choice to purchase Dec 2018 265 options for 1400 each. Two will cost you $2,800 and you’ll have a 53% participation ratio, buy a third for a total of $4,200 and sell 2, Dec 2018 295’s for $200 credit each. You’ll have a 78% participation ratio up to 295 (11%) and 26% participation ratio above that and it will cost $3800 of your interest.
If the market tanks, you lost the interest on your money and very little of if any of the principle. If Mr. Market keeps going up, you get a nice percentage of the gain designed at your comfort level with (almost) none of the risk.
Understanding the options jargon is less important than understanding this concept:
With your risk-free investment income, invest in the most speculative investments that have the potential to give you the highest returns. Even if you lose your entire investment, you will never go to the poor house because you will never lose principal.
Examples Of Speculative Investments
* DoneAt53 discusses buying out-of-the-money options that provide higher returns on a specific stock or index versus buying the actual stock or index. The downside is that if your options expire out of the money, they are worthless.
* Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin are the hottest speculative investments at the moment and finally attracting mainstream capital. Bitcoin could easily collapse by 80% next week, but it could also continue to go up multiple times because of a surge in liquidity and world-wide adoption. You can by your slice of Bitcoin on an exchange like Coinbase.com.
* Internet and tech stocks in emerging markets. Buying the Googles, Facebooks, Ubers, Apples, of XYZ emerging markets is a straightforward investment thesis. Buying the next “Yahoo of China” was my investment thesis in 1999 when I bought VCSY. I continued this thought process in 2013 when I wrote, Should I Buy Chinese Stocks? Sina, Baidu, and RenRen have all done really well since.
* Angel investing where you provide seed stage capital is another way to earn massive returns. The problem with angel investing is that companies often have a minimum of $25,000 – $100,000. That’s unaffordable for most people, especially if you need to make $25,000- $100,000 in risk-free income. I’m no longer angel investing partly because of bad experiences. But if the minimums come down, I might do so again.
* The crappiest small cap IPO that has gotten bludgeoned since going public for whatever reason. One example is Blue Apron that IPOed at $10 and fell all the way down to $2.97/share. I decided to pick $10,400 worth up at $3.15 a share. They found a new CEO, lowered guidance, and fired a bunch of people since. The bar is low now and the stock shot up to $4.15 at one point. I hope they get bought out.
Another example is Snapchat. It went IPO at $17, got foolishly hyped up to $27/share and then disappointed repeatedly in its quarterly results and fell to $12 a share. The problem with my SNAP purchase at $12.24 is that even at current levels, it’s still valued at $18 billion. It’s harder to move rapidly or get purchased for a large premium when the company is already huge.
The recent crap IPO I missed was Funko (FNKO), a maker of toys. They priced the stock at $12, gapped up to $19.93 and closed that week at $7, all before reporting results. Now the stock is up 40%. You’ve really got to pay attention if you want to capture such opportunities.
* Original works of art from unknown artists who you think have the potential to go mainstream. If they don’t go mainstream, at least you can enjoy the work.
Speculative Investing Framework Example
To provide clarity, I’ve created a Speculative Investing Framework. The person below has $650,000 of low-risk capital returning $28,000 a year, or 4.3%. He proceeds to invest $28,000 in various speculative investments with a potential return of -75% to +625%.
The example has several assumptions that should be noted: 1) the low risk income is not required for survival, 2) rental income may or may not be considered low risk, 3) the time frame for the potential returns is unknown or up to the investor to decide, and 4) to deploy such a strategy, you must save aggressively and stop spending like a knucklehead, and 5) it’s up to you to figure out what else beyond CDs and muni bonds are considered low risk and invest accordingly.
Even if this person loses his entire $28,000 of low risk income in speculative investments, he’ll be fine. The key is to not get carried away by cutting into principal, much like a gambler does when he pulls out his wallet or goes to the ATM machine for more cash.
It’s Hard To Get Rich Quickly Investing In An Index Fund
Although earning a 16%+ return on your S&P 500 index fund in 2017 is excellent, it’s a relatively slow way to earn a fortune since the stock market averages around 8% – 9% a year long term. After all, one of my motto’s is achieving financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
If you want to get rich quicker, it’s worth carving out 5% – 10% of your investable assets and/or reinvesting your risk-free income into speculative investments that complement your plain vanilla investments each year. Just make sure your risk capital is capital you can afford to lose, because you will lose quite often. Also make sure you have a comfortable cash buffer to provide for you and your family in case Armageddon strikes again.
Because I hate losing money, I decided to invest time in my 30s building a lifestyle business. I figured worst case, I’d become a better communicator and learn something about the online publishing world. I knew I would not regret putting in an extra effort while I still had the energy.
My problem now is that at age 40 I’ve hit an inflection point where time is much more valuable than money. The desire for more time is why I’m happily farming out my capital to people who want to spend their careers looking at investments. It’s the same reason why I’m highly amenable to hiring a property manager the next time my tenants give me hell.
If you are lucky enough to strike it rich with a speculative investment, do your best to turn the funny money into a real asset that generates stable cash flow. If not, use some or all of your lucky winnings to pay for a better life.
Barring a natural disaster, the $580,000 property I bought in 2003 with my VCSY money will still be there generating $4,000+/month in rent forever. And if not, maybe I’ll make it into the Financial Samurai office or have my parents or sister live in it for free one day.
Remember: You only need to get rich once! Turn your lucky break into a gift that keeps on giving.
Related: Investment Ideas At The Top Of The Market
Readers, how much of your capital do you allocate to highly speculative investments? Do you have any big wins? If so, how did you spend or reinvest the proceeds? Note: On 9/25/2017, a condo unit next to mine with a similar layout sold for $1,360,000. 
The post How To Invest In Speculative Investments Like Bitcoin Without Losing Your Shirt appeared first on Financial Samurai.
from https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-to-invest-in-speculative-investments-like-bitcoin-without-huge-losses/
0 notes