I Accidentally Made $1,000,000 (Here’s How)

If you have been paying any attention lately, you know that the market has been going nuts. I mean, look at this thing—it looks like an EKG. But despite that, I am so excited because amidst all of the craziness, something—well, a little crazy—happened.

Now, before I tell you what actually happened though, I need to make one thing very, very, very clear: do not try this at home. It was a perfect storm, a freak scenario, and as you can probably guess from the title, I didn’t even mean to do this. There’s a good chance that trying to do something like this, especially on a regular basis, would blow up in my face—and your face. So don’t do it.

One thing you should do though is absolutely smash that like button, because there’s a direct correlation between the like button and our writer’s self-esteem.

Now, we’re not going to go too far in depth on the nitty-gritty here, but if you do need a more in-depth look at what some of the terms in this video mean, we have tons of content out there that covers topics like this and more, so be sure to check it out after this video.

All right, now let’s get into it. In the middle of all the craziness and the market decline that we’ve experienced in the last few weeks, I was doing some tax-loss harvesting—which essentially is where you sell investments at a loss and then you buy a similar (but not identical) investment in order to offset the gains but maintain the same investment exposure.

Now, there’s a little more to it than that, but again, that’s not the point of this video. All you need to know is that tax-loss harvesting is a strategy—and it was a strategy that I was using in order to save on taxes.

So what I did is I placed a sell order for a mutual fund early in the morning on April the 9th. I want you to keep that date in mind. At the same time, I put in a purchase for an ETF—again, it’s a similar type of investment but not identical—and I put that in at the same time I put in the sell order.

By the end of the day, once those two trades settled, it made nearly $1 million.

Okay, let me explain how that happened. This ultimately came down to a few factors, the first of which being how mutual funds and ETFs both work—and how they work a little bit differently.

Mutual funds and ETFs are both types of investments. They’re baskets of holdings, and orders to purchase and sell mutual funds are filled at the end of the trading day at the fund’s net asset value. Whatever the price of that fund is at the close of the market, that’s the price the order fills at.

ETFs (exchange-traded funds), on the other hand, are bought and sold throughout the trading day like a stock.

So how did this trade turn into a million dollars? Well, remember I placed these orders at the very beginning of the day on April 9th. Anybody remember what the market did on April 9th? Let’s take a look. Even though I placed those orders at the beginning of the day, only the buy order for the ETF was filled at the lower price in the morning.

Then, we had this massive 8.5% upswing in the middle of the day. The market ended the trading day up 9.12%, at which point the mutual fund then filled.

This entire scenario was essentially a double win from the same market movement, because I had two different types of orders—an ETF purchase that executed immediately at the low point, and a mutual fund sale that didn’t execute until after the market rise. I was literally able to benefit from the same market surge twice.

I had double the exposure in that holding. The ETF caught the market surge in real time, while the mutual fund’s end-of-day execution meant that I got to sell at the new, higher price at the end of the day. Essentially, I caught perfect timing on both ends—buying at the low end with the ETF and then selling at the high end with the mutual fund.

This double benefit of the market spike created gains far beyond what anybody could reasonably expect or plan for. And because of that, I will not be expecting, nor will I be planning or trying, to do it again.

I want to again make this as clear as I possibly can: this is not a viable long-term wealth-building strategy. This was a very happy accident. We don’t make mistakes, we have happy accidents.

What essentially happened was winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning at the same time your favorite team won the Super Bowl. The chances of this happening again? Slim to none.

And the reason why this was such a rare occurrence is really twofold. First off, market movements like what we saw on April 9th are incredibly rare. I mean, we’re talking about a 9.5% swing in a single day. In fact, this was the third-best trading day in the stock market since World War II. To put that in perspective, the average daily movement in the stock market is typically less than 1%.

So while these dramatic market swings make for exciting headlines and fun stories, they are far from the norm, and they’re certainly not something that you should try to base your investment strategy around.

And I don’t try to base my investment strategy around this. I am a professional financial advisor with decades of experience, and even with decades of knowledge and credentials, this was totally a fluke. I literally just got really, really lucky.

And the thing about market timing is that it’s not just about getting it right once. You have to be right two times. You need to nail both the entry into the position point as well as the exit out of the position point.

And if you want to try to repeat this so-called strategy, you have to do it over and over and over and over again—and most people, even professionals, can’t do that. In fact, 94% of active managers fail to beat the S&P 500 over a 20-year period.

But let’s say for argument’s sake that you decided to try this strategy anyway. You would essentially be gambling with your financial future. The market could just as easily have gone the other way. Or I could have been buying the mutual fund and selling the ETF instead of the other way around. And had that been the case, I’d be making a very different video right now titled “How I Accidentally Lost a Million Dollars.”

Now I know there’s a ton of social media or online hype saying that they can make you whatever-thousand percent day trading—all you have to do is read their book or buy their course. But for every win that they show you, there are dozens of folks who either underperformed or lost money.

Here’s the reality: successful investing isn’t about these one-in-a-million shots. It’s about consistency, discipline, and staying the course even when the market looks like a game of Geometry Dash.

Basing a long-term strategy on something like timing the market goes against everything we know about building sustainable wealth. The real path to financial success isn’t through these dramatic one-off events—it’s through consistent, methodical investing over time. It’s about making regular contributions to your investment accounts, diversifying your portfolio, and letting the power of compound interest work its magic.

It may not be as exciting, but it’s a whole lot more reliable. And frankly, it still gets me so excited.

While this story makes for a great video—and trust me, I’m so glad that it worked out the way it did—it’s crucial to understand that this actually is not a strategy. It’s not even really a lucky accident that you should try to replicate.

Instead, let this be an entertaining reminder that the market can do crazy things. And the best approach is to stick to your long-term investment strategy, keep saving regularly, stay diversified, and don’t let market volatility knock you off course.

Remember: boring is beautiful when it comes to investing. The slow and steady approach might not make for viral content, but it’s likely going to be the best path to building long-lasting wealth.