I've realized something about myself the last few days.  I'm actually a person that doesn't mind taking risks, when there is a potential reward that makes it worthwhile.  I never realized this before, because I generally felt that I was relatively conservative about life, often looking for safety (perhaps because I've often felt a lack of emotional safety - but that's a whole other topic).

Anyways, I realized this while thinking about the stories I could tell from my life.  I'm not a great storyteller, but I've gone through quite some unusual things - and the common thread was that I was willing to take risks because I felt the potential reward was worth it.  I may have been wrong, but that's why it was a risk.  In fact, I realize I have been doing this my whole life.  Often I avoid certain things because they seem like they have a great risk with very low or no chance of reward - for example, bungee jumping to me seems to have a great risk with no real reward (other than the adrenaline rush - but I'm not into that), so I would avoid it.  Working at a startup - potential great reward with (what I consider) low risk (the worst that can happen is I need to look for another job).

So this is the background to my plan of becoming a professional stock trader.  Around January of this year, I began testing some new trading strategies I learned, and they have worked very well.  Since then, I have been learning a lot more, and finally feel I have a handle on the whole thing, and that the potential reward is worth the risk of giving it a shot.  When I finish the current datacenter rollout with Box, I'm planning to transition out of full time and focus on stock trading as well as catching up on some reading and learning and thinking I've been wanting to do more of for a while.  The "risk management" is also relevant in the sense that, I realize that's fundamentally what a stock trader does.  A trader essentially analyzes potential risk/reward compared to the "market price" of the risk, and if he or she identifies an anomaly, makes a trade against it.  I've made many mistakes in my past risk/reward estimations, but I think I have found my areas of strength and if I make the best of it, I think I'll do OK.

So, my whole "risk/reward" thing actually goes pretty deep.  When I think about telling things to my friends, one thing I consider is the "risk" of how they will respond, but also the "risk" of how they will respond later if they realize I didn't tell them something.  And thrown into this is the uncertainty of how things will turn out (for example, if I didn't tell anyone about my plan of becoming a professional trader, there's little risk of embarrassment later if I utterly fail).

So the truth is, this is all a prelude to something else I'm sneaking in at the end of this post.  I'm hedging my bet by creating a long prologue which may dissuade some people from reading all the way through.  So grats to those that made it so far.  I appreciate your interest in my life.  So I think how I'll put it is, friends, don't be surprised if I get married before too long.  Of course by no means am I saying it will happen, only to not be surprised if it does.  You're probably thinking, who even knew he was seeing someone?  Well, it's a story that does not lend itself to easy summarization, so I think that shall be enough for now.

So, i was driving to work today, and had a brilliant idea (I know, it's a bit lame to call my own idea brilliant.  And I'm sure not everyone will think it's brilliant, and I tried to think of other words that felt right, but that's the only one that seemed to fit.  So since it's my blog, I'm ruling that I'm allowed to call it brilliant).  So background first, Kiva is an awesome organization, that helps facilitate microfinance loans.  They work with local microfinance partners in developing countries, that help distribute, coordinate, and otherwise oversee microfinance loans to local entrepreneurs (who, as you can read about in the wikipedia article, are unable to obtain credit in the way we have easy access to in the US, etc).  Here is a quick page about how Kiva works.

So Kiva is awesome, they allow you with a few mouse clicks to make a difference in the life of someone struggling in a developing country, in a sustainable way.  You aren't "donating" money, but rather loaning it and will get it repaid (many of Kiva's partners have records of 0 delinquencies across all their loans, sometimes up to half million $ worth of loans).  That's not the news, as Kiva has even gotten a mention from former President Clinton, and has gotten a good amount of press and exposure.

Ok, so second part of the background.  Those of us with pretty good credit, tend to get quite a bit of mailings of credit cards with "0% introductory rates for 12 months!" or sometimes even up to 18 months.  I've got one right now that I've put a lot of my purchases on and deferring payment til the introductory period is over.  That's not something I recommend to anyone except for those with very good financial discipline.  Credit cards can really get you in trouble, but if you have proper financial discipline, they are also great tools.

So the "brilliant" part comes by combining these two things.  I could, say, get a credit card with a 15 month introductory period (I've got one offer from chase right here).  I expect I might a credit card with a limit somewhere in the $12000 or more.  Now the way to get money into the kiva system is through paypal, either through credit card or funds.  So I could charge somewhere up to 60-80% of the card, and have $10000 or so worth of funds to lend out through the microfinance loans.  That's a lot of funds to give these people access to.  It does entail taking on some risk for myself as well as a credit hit, but essentially that's what I'm "giving" in terms of help.  By taking on some risk and a slight credit hit, I'm able to be the intermediary risk holder and help a lot of people.  Imagine if 100 people did this, that'd be an extra $1 million in microfinance loans.  If 2000 people did this, that'd be $20 million more to help people in developing countries.  Ok, I know most of you are pretty good at math so I'll stop there.  But Kiva loans do get repaid, and when the introductory period winds down, you could withdraw the funds and pay off your credit card.  If you felt it had gone well, you could do it all over again with a new introductory rate credit card.

Now, certainly this isn't without risk.  And you'd need to make the minimum monthly payment on your card in order to keep the introductory rate.  You would really need to be on top of your finances to do this, but if you are, this might be a powerful way to help a lot of people.  I'm going to do some more thinking to really analyze the risks and maybe do some digging to find out how feasible this really is, but fundamentally it seems sound to me.

by a strange confluence of events and thoughts and conversations and etc..  to be a better person.  there's so much misunderstanding in the world, so much anger and pain.  and none of us is innocent, may I be a better, kinder, more understanding and loving person.  thanks to all that have helped point the way or inspire me.