It’s often said that people need to reach rock bottom before deciding to take a chance on that one thing that can change their life completely. For David Capablanca, rock bottom was realizing how much time he would spend working off his student loans.
“After a six-month grace period after college, I was working for low wages that didn’t justify the amount of student loans that I took out and an addition two to three years of work before I became a licensed architect,” he says.
“I had a master’s in architecture from one of the best schools, studying under the best architects, with a great portfolio. And hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt.”
David eventually found a way out in stock trading. With no illusions that it’s a field where success is just handed out to people, he chose it over real estate, his second option. What followed was an arduous study schedule that saw him spend most of his days learning about trading.
“I used to be all over Facebook in college, but then all of a sudden, I completely dropped out,” he recalls. “I was like Batman because Batman disappeared for three years. It was a complete switch. I lived out of an office and spent 18 to 20 hours a day just studying.”
Besides spending every moment he could spare studying, David Capablanca knew he had to create a strategy that would make him stick with trading. He initially gave himself a timeline of 5 to 10 years to make it as a trader, but he was able to meet the goal well before that.
But he also knew that trading could get tricky and that people are prone to giving it up.
“I knew a lot of people that failed at trading. They give themselves an out,” he says. “But there was a strategy that the Greeks had called ‘burning the boats,’ and it’s what Hernan Cortes used when he came over to conquer Mexico. After meeting dissent from his crew upon landing in Mexico, he waited until they were asleep and burned the ships they came on. There was nowhere to go but forward from then on.”
His drastic approach meant that, when market conditions became just right, David Capablanca knew which sales he needed to execute and when. So he rose from the ashes of seclusion and started a career in a new challenging field with a triumph.
He hasn’t stopped since. Becoming a master trader meant learning from other masters, and he had the opportunity to do so in Puerto Rico. There, he fell in with White Diamond Research, found mentors in some of the best traders today, and expanded his knowledge about shorting stocks and identifying red flags in companies.
His experiences also gave him plenty to discuss in his podcast, The Friendly Bear. Whether it’s books about trading, reviews of trades, or interviews with some of the top traders he has access to, David Capablanca’s seeing the benefits of the risks he’s taken come in; and the future looks bright.
“In the future, I want to use my own resources and capabilities to design skyscrapers. It’s giving me the means to do two things I love, and I have the skills for both,” he says.
