Remember What This Is All About

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. You get the day off, wake up early and play football, shower up to watch football, and then you get to enjoy a huge meal with your family. That's the way I grew up and I suppose I talk to enough people where that seems like the pretty standard day. Is there a better series of events from morning to evening?

But this time of year everyone already starts thinking about the holiday season and everything commercial that comes along with it. This makes it easy to forget what today is really all about. So let’s try to remember to be thankful. It is Thanksgiving Day after all.

Today I'm most thankful to have my family, my friends and my health. I’m a young man living in New York City with the opportunity to grow a startup hedge fund from the ground up. Although it's probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, I’m just thankful to even have the opportunity to do it. All I can do is go home every day knowing that I did the best I could, and keep going the next day.

I don’t really get into too much detail about my business or family here on the blog. I try keep it more technically oriented, hence the allstarcharts. So most of you don’t know this, but my grandparents had to leave Cuba in the early 1960s to come to the United States. My dad was 3 and my mom was 6 when they came to Miami. They had to leave everything behind. They were each allowed to bring 3 outfits and the kids could only bring 1 toy. My grandfather always told me, “I came here with 3 pennies”.

I’m very fortunate to have the opportunities that I have today. And it’s really only possible because of the sacrifices that my family made 50 ago. I think about that constantly. It's probably the reason that I try to work so hard. Because if I don't, and I'm lazy, I feel guilty like I'm doing them a disservice. It's almost like if I don't work my tail off, the life changing sacrifices that my grandparents made would be for nothing.

There's something that my pal Mike Bellafiore always says, "It’s a privilege to be able to trade”. It realy hits home when he says that because it's true. And to have our community of investors and traders that we get to share information with every day is special. We’re all here on Stocktwits, twitter and the blogosphere to help each other and share ideas. Let's all appreciate that. Market participants in the past didn't have any of this.

So these are just some of the things that I'm thankful for.

What about you? What are you most thankful for today? Because that is what today is all about.