For a Few Minutes, I Was $100K Richer
So I wake up this morning and check the portfolio on Snowball Analytics app like I normally do. It’s a habit at this point. The Canadian markets aren’t open, and the U.S. overnight markets are usually pretty thinly traded, so I’m not exactly expecting anything exciting. I open the account and have to look at the number twice. The portfolio is up over $100,000. 😂
For a few seconds there was that beautiful moment where my brain was trying to figure out what had happened. Did crypto suddenly explode overnight? Did one of the positions get bought out? Did I somehow completely miss some massive piece of news?
But as much fun as the fantasy is, reality always sets in. There was absolutely no reason the portfolio should be up anywhere close to $100,000, so I started digging through the holdings trying to figure out what had happened.
Turns out one of my crypto holdings had somehow been changed to a U.S. energy company that trades under the same ticker symbol as the crypto. The funny part is that this particular crypto holding is about as far from a serious investment as you can get. It’s one of those little gambling tokens trading for less than a penny that I threw about $25 CAD into. It’s basically something fun to watch with the kids and see what happens. If it goes to zero, nobody is losing any sleep over it.
Apparently, though, if SnowBall accidentally decides those tiny crypto tokens are actually shares of a U.S. energy company, $25 can turn into a very impressive-looking amount of money pretty quickly.
In fact, the account was showing a total profit of +$169,514.00 or 465,519.4% gain.
So for one brief, glorious moment this morning, I got to experience what it feels like to wake up nearly $160,000 richer. I sent in a trouble ticket, as unfortunately my newly discovered fortune turned out to be nothing more than a ticker-symbol mix-up. Not sure why it was right yesterday and what caused it to change over night but 🤷♂️
Still, it was a pretty nice number to look at while it lasted. If only it were real, and now back to the reality of heading to work.
