Episode 1 | Engineer Mr. Liao, Opened the Door to a Million-Dollar Opportunity with an AMD LEAP Call

The Road to Million Dollars is a deep-dive interview series by the Tiger Community, featuring outstanding investors recognized under the "$1 Million" Honors Program.

The "Million Dollar" Honors Program is not about the size of an investor's assets. Instead, it recognizes the investment capabilities investors consistently demonstrate in real markets. Within a designated calendar year, every $100,000 in realized gains unlocks one Tiger Gold Brick or Tiger Gold Ingot, with up to nine rewards available. When an investor reaches $1 million in gains, they achieve the "Exclusive Edition" Million Dollar Milestone.

Every investor on The Road to Million Dollars has their own approach and answers. Some are still exploring and refining their strategies in the market, while others have already built a mature investment framework. What truly deserves to be seen, however, is how they identify opportunities, make decisions, and manage risk.

Through the real experiences and reflections of these outstanding investors, The Road to Million Dollars hopes to inspire fellow Tiger Community members to find their own path to investing success.

"Nobody really wants to teach you investing — it's a fairly high-risk discipline, after all."

"Valuation matters, but it's often skewed. What matters more is the industry's rise and fall."

"My biggest drawdown was 78%. That's when I truly understood — industry risk can wipe you out overnight."

Investor Profile

I. Starting Point: The First Trade at Age 24, a 10% Gain—"Pure Luck"

Q: When did you first get into investing?

A: At 24, right when I started working. You could say I began investing in about the second month of my first job. At first, I dabbled in IPOs—not actual U.S. stocks yet.

Q: Do you remember your first trade?

A: If I remember correctly, it was Yangzijiang Shipbuilding. I flipped it for roughly a 10% gain.

Q: What led you to pick it?

A: I was young then and didn't truly understand what people in the industry meant by "trend." I just felt the stock was at a low point at the time, and I also thought Singapore's shipping industry was in decent shape, so I invested in Yangzijiang rather blindly.

At first, it was purely about "value"—more on the value-investing side—because I didn't really understand what stocks were back then. I thought if something was cheap and had value, you could invest in it.

Q: You were lucky—you still made money.

A: It was only about 18%, not much. Just luck, pure luck.

II. Learning: Books, Because "Nobody Wants to Teach You"

Q: After that, how did you mainly learn while trading?

A: I leaned toward books. Honestly, there's basically no one you can apprentice under in investing—there aren't many people willing to share, because after all, it's a fairly high-risk discipline.

Q: Any book recommendations?

A: Jim Cramer's series is pretty good. For ordinary people, he writes quite simply and helps you understand how the market works. Peter Lynch's book is good too.

Later, when I got into options, I still read books. Actually, I read books on options more than a decade ago, but back then Singapore's options trading environment wasn't very friendly—the costs were too high, and the tools weren't complete. Especially the barriers for selling calls and selling puts were relatively high. So ten years ago, if you talked to people about selling options, they'd basically tell you it was "pie in the sky." But now, with Tiger, selling options has become quite convenient.

III. Stock-Picking Framework: Valuations Can Be Off, but Industry Rise and Fall Won't Lie

Q: When you pick stocks now, what factors do you focus on? Valuation, earnings, or industry competitiveness?

A: Nowadays I focus more on valuation and industry.

Valuation is important, but valuations often deviate. Whether it's valuations given by major banks or private valuations you do yourself, there are usually deviations, and those deviations tend to be reflected in the stock price.

Because of this, the rise and fall of an industry becomes crucial. You can't invest in an industry that's going downhill; you have to be in a developing industry, not a sunset industry. Of course, in a sunset industry, your valuation may look low, very attractive—but it's a sunset industry, and I won't put my money in there.

IV. Current Holdings: AI → Chips → Power → Storage, a "Super Cycle" Chain

Q: What sectors are you currently focused on?

A: Still the AI industry. More specifically, the chip industry. Although people still think it's a bit risky, the chip industry is currently in a bull market.

$Alphabet(GOOG)$, $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$, $Microsoft(MSFT)$, even $Oracle(ORCL)$—they're all still pouring massive amounts of money into AI. And the bottleneck, after all, that investment will be power. Which companies will meet the new power demand? Bloom Energy (BE) looks interesting too.

Because basically, once you have chips, the next thing you need is energy; once you have energy, people will move toward so-called storage and memory; and once you have storage and memory, it loops back to chips. Why do I say that—AI itself is a computing thing. When you have more computing, you need more storage, more computing power. Basically, this industry is a super cycle.

Q: How long do you think this cycle will last?

A: The next 5 years will be like $Apple(AAPL)$ back in the day, like smartphones back then, or like $Netflix(NFLX)$ back then, or like electric vehicles. It's the same. Because I think we're still at a fairly early beginning. True mass adoption will probably take another 3 to 5 years.

I know people still say there's a bubble in AI chips, but honestly, it's just like $Tesla Motors(TSLA)$ back then—nobody believed in electric vehicles, but early investors did quite well. Same with Netflix at the beginning, same with cloud computing at the beginning. As long as you're an early investor, you'll basically see decent returns.

V. Storage Industry: A 3-to-6-Month "Wait-and-See" Period, but the Cycle Has Gotten Longer

Q: This year's biggest gainers included memory and optical modules, but the pullback from June to now has been pretty severe. How do you see the opportunities ahead?

A: I can only say that for now, these three months or even six months may just be a wait-and-see period—because after all, it had risen too much.

From a valuation perspective, the storage industry isn't actually that expensive. But if you treat the storage industry in the traditional way, it would be considered a high point. Because the storage industry is judged by P/E ratio: when the P/E hits single digits, people think it's "the end of the cycle"—which actually means it's at the peak. Every time the memory industry's PE goes to single digits, that's basically the industry's highest point, so people are naturally a bit worried.

But looking at it now, the supply shortage hasn't been resolved. Looking at all the earnings reports over the past two or three months, this month included, we can basically see that the storage industry is still in a state of shortage.

So I can only say these three months are a "rest." I can see a bit of rotation, a transfer of assets—maybe from storage to software. Because if you look at $Salesforce.com(CRM)$ or $Adobe(ADBE)$, the software industry has already risen quite a bit, at least 30% to 40%. So I can only say the market is just making a small adjustment, these three to six months.

As for the bubble situation in Korea, it's purely because people got a bit aggressive, plus the regulation of ETFs wasn't very proactive, which led to it. This phenomenon will only happen during these three months—because when people's leverage is healthier, this so-called bubble phenomenon will be delayed.

Q: Is storage really a cyclical stock? Opinions are divided right now.

A: In the past, we all thought chip stocks, the chip industry, were cyclical—like $NVIDIA(NVDA)$. People used to think it was a cyclical industry. But take $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ as an example: people say its bull run is over because it's been rising for years—but looking at its earnings, there's basically no sign of slowing down. Even the day before yesterday we got news that $NVIDIA(NVDA)$'s data center guidance needs to be revised upward.

So if you ask me about the cyclicality of the storage industry—this cycle has gotten bigger, gotten longer. In the past the cycle might have been shorter; I can only say the cycle is longer now.

Because this cycle is longer, the storage industry will reap more benefits, and those benefits will be returned to shareholders—like how $SK hynix(SKHY)$ has recently been buying back its own stock. So in the long term, I'd say it's a fairly bullish state, and this bullish state could even extend to 2027. Around mid-to-late 2027, people might start worrying about how 2028 will look, and that will cause some stock price adjustments. That's all I can say.

Q: Within storage there are sub-segments like HBM, HDD, DDR, SSD. Do you look at the sector as a whole or at the differentiation?

A: I think the shortage will be across the board.

At first people were only bullish on HBM because of NVIDIA's data centers. But because HBM is in such high demand, memory fabs will adjust their shipment mix and cut back on NAND and SSD shipments.

Of course, I also have my own view: when AI reaches true equilibrium in the cloud, AI will also move toward the "edge." What do I mean? It won't just be in the cloud; it'll be local—maybe PCs, or smartphones, or even the recently popular intelligent robots. When AI moves in the edge direction, so-called storage, SSDs, and the like will see certain demand.

Q: The rise of Chinese memory (CXMT, YMTC)—does it affect the low-end substitution dynamic between China and the U.S.?

A: The impact is not significant.

Basically, when you have so much demand, even if low-end memory capacity comes online, it purely gives the various smart devices, smartphones, smart computers a little breather. Because basically, to get real fab capacity, you need 2 to 3 years—from site selection, building a new fab, to even getting the equipment, it takes 3 to 4 years. So I don't see any direction that solves the storage problem. From now, it still needs two or three years to get a real solution.

China's new memory capacity—I don't see any major impact. It'll only provide a small relief, a small buffer for the smartphone or PC industry. Because you can see that Apple basically really can't find any memory chips, and that's also preventing it from raising its earnings guidance.

VI. Tools: From Common Stock to LEAP Calls

Q: What's your trading frequency like now?

A: My trading is mainly medium-to-long term. Medium-to-long term is relatively safer and won't lead to losses due to too much market volatility. I also do a little short-term trading, usually income-type trades—volatility-based, income-oriented small trades.

Q: Do you usually combine options with selling puts and selling calls for income?

A: Of course. Selling puts, selling calls, or selling options in general is basically a short-term income method. When we're waiting for the next wave of trend, selling puts and selling calls is actually a decent short-term trade to earn a little income.

Q: What about the buy side? If you're bullish on a name?

A: This one million dollars was also achieved through buying calls.

When you're bullish on an industry, LEAP calls are actually a good way to use leverage—not real leverage, but a way to magnify gains and enhance returns.

Even long calls and long puts, in an extreme state—when a stock is as low as it can possibly go—a long call is actually a good risk combination. Because you can see that you might only need to put in a very small amount of capital into a call, but your return could be several times over, bringing the profit back.

Q: Why did you choose LEAPs instead of leveraged ETFs?

A: Because ETFs still carry certain risks.

These leveraged ETFs basically have some mechanics behind them, requiring large amounts of margin and such. So this leverage causes too much volatility, and too much volatility often makes you unable to hold—because when your losses reach a certain pain point, you'll be forced to dump your positions.

So leveraged ETFs are certainly a good choice, but relatively speaking, the risk they bring is even greater than LEAP calls. That's why I don't focus much on leveraged ETFs. Of course, if you do a little short-term trading, short calls and short puts on leveraged ETFs can actually achieve decent results.

Q: What opportunity led you to start using options?

A: I only started looking at options last year, because I realized options are what truly let you reach your goals faster. Of course, common stock is a decent, safe direction, but to reach a million-dollar goal might take much longer.

There were two catalysts. One was my friend who "sold too early" on NVIDIA telling me to come to Tiger—because Tiger's commissions are relatively low and it's options-friendly, which got me started with options.

The other was last year, when Trump was shouting about tariff wars and our common stocks were in a pretty disadvantaged state. Then the moment Trump announced the tariff pause, that jump made you feel—options are actually a great tool at the right time. At the most pessimistic moments, the returns options bring, and risk management, are actually better than stocks.

VII. Macro: The World's Money Is Finite

Q: When you buy stocks, do you consider macro factors? Gold surging, 30-year U.S. Treasuries hitting new highs, and so on.

A: Company fundamentals actually make up a large part, but macro definitely needs attention too.

Because gold, Bitcoin, and even U.S. Treasuries are important indicators—we need to understand capital flows. The world's money is finite; capital is finite. So when money flows from one place to another, from stocks to gold, or from the stock market to the bond market, you'll get certain volatility, and the stock market will also see certain volatility.

I'd also encourage people to maybe buy some gold as a hedge, or even use U.S. Treasuries as a hedge. It's simple: U.S. Treasuries just recently reached their highest yields, and 30-year yields have hit their peak. This will also cause some money in the stock market to flow into bonds—because you can imagine, you basically don't need to do anything and you get a 4% to 5% return, which is actually pretty decent. So I also pay attention to gold and U.S. Treasury trends; that's the macro trend.

Q: How do you view the risk situation in the market over the past month?

A: I'd say the current risk level is moderate.

U.S. stocks are at all-time highs, but basically that's also a perennial view. I've been investing for over 15 years, and almost every two years the U.S. government has this debt issue, this so-called talking point. And I think this talking point is purely a political discussion.

As long as the U.S. economy is still being revised upward, and as long as the U.S. can still hold onto real intellectual property, we basically don't see any major impact from U.S. debt. Because as long as intellectual property remains in the U.S., and now Trump is even actively promoting having major chip makers build fabs in the U.S.—that will also drive the U.S. economy—so on the debt side, I don't see any major problems. I can only say this is a short-term risk.

As for 30-year Treasury yields spiking, I'd say it's a demand issue. Because major companies like $Alphabet(GOOG)$, $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$, and $Oracle(ORCL)$ are all issuing debt, and the scale of that debt is not small, flooding the bond market with too much supply, which has weakened demand for U.S. Treasuries. Because when you have better bond choices, like $Alphabet(GOOG)$, $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$, or even $Microsoft(MSFT)$, pension funds and the like will choose higher-quality bonds. So that's what caused the temporarily excessive U.S. Treasury yield issue—I'd say it's caused by an imbalance in the bond market.

VIII. Risk Management: What a 78% Drawdown Taught Me

Q: The names you follow are quite volatile. How do you usually control risk?

A: Yes, risk management is pretty hard, I can only say that.

My risk management basically looks only at industry-level risk. I won't say that if my risk management, my position drops below a certain percentage, I'll clear out or stop loss. My risk management is more about industry risk—only when I can see any massive risk in the industry will I choose to exit. Or on the macro side, when macroeconomic risk is so large that you need to choose to exit, only then will I truly choose to exit. That's basically my so-called risk management.

Q: When a single stock's volatility is quite high, do you consider adjusting your position?

A: Yes. When it's too high, I'll choose to have some money exit; then when it adjusts to a decent level, I can add some back. Because you know, stocks don't go up every day. Of course, during an adjustment period, that's when you need to find the right risk-management position—you just can't be too aggressive, can't be too aggressive.

Q: For you, what's the maximum drawdown you can accept?

A: My maximum drawdown was 78%.

That wasn't on Tiger; it was 9 to 10 years ago. At the time oil was in a massive bull market, and oil prices could go above $100. I was young and ignorant then—I moved my money into an oil transport company, a pipeline company. Because it offered decent dividends.

And those decent dividends made me think: since oil is going down, this oil transport company basically just does transportation, so the risk shouldn't be too high. I figured I'd just leave it there collecting dividends to ride out the adjustment.

But at the time I didn't realize that oil going down was the so-called industry risk, and that industry risk eventually led the company to the brink of collapse.

So that's what I mean—industry risk is incredibly important. Because you think you're holding decent dividends, high returns, and you think the company is safe—but industry risk can wipe you out overnight, literally overnight. It made me lose roughly 78% of my value, just like that.

Q: After that incident, did you develop stronger views on risk management?

A: Yes. I pay much more attention to fluctuations on the industry side.

IX. Industries Along the Way: From Citibank to AMD

Q: Over 15 years you must have touched many industries. Any you can share?

A: After that I also got into banking. My first U.S. stock was Citibank. At the time I purely thought that after the Lehman Brothers incident, the banking industry would see a decent recovery. But after I invested in Citibank, I held it for about two years and didn't see much growth—although I still made a little money, it wasn't really an ideal return.

Q: When did you start paying attention to the AI industry?

A: About three or four years ago, in 2022.

In 2022 inflation had reached a point where the Fed did Quantitative Tightening, and everyone thought policy would tighten. When the Fed tightens policy, basically the entire chip industry, all growth stocks, go down.

And actually, at that time, because we were already having small AI discussions in the medical device industry—how AI could help our work—I felt then that AI might one day become widespread.

At that time NVIDIA hadn't yet brought up the ChatGPT wave. I remember around New Year's (or Christmas), I told a good friend of mine: Buy NVIDIA.

Q: Did he buy it?

A: He bought it, but he also sold too early.

Q: So you brought him a lot of returns!

A: But relatively speaking, I myself didn't buy NVIDIA at the time. I think it's pretty funny—I also missed that little opportunity.

Q: You recommended it to him but didn't buy it yourself?

A: Because at the time I quite liked AMD. Because $Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ had the CPU trend at the time, and I felt no matter how much AI loved GPUs, it would still need to love CPUs.

Of course, back then CPUs weren't getting attention. It wasn't until this year that CPU became a focus, and I finally got some returns.

X. The Million-Dollar Milestone Moment: An AMD LEAP

Q: Do you remember the moment you achieved your first million-dollar profit?

A: I still remember. It was this past March. It came from one of my AMD LEAPs.

Q: What was your first reaction?

A: Of course I was a bit excited. After all, I'd been in the U.S. market for several years, up and down for several years, so finally reaching a harvest, I was pretty excited.

Q: When you received the milestone award from us, did you think about sharing it with anyone?

A: I took a photo and shared it with my family.

Q: For the next stage, what are your thoughts or goals?

A: The next goal is ten million.

Q: When do you hope to achieve that?

A: By 2030.

Q: That's four years from now. Will you make any adjustments to your investment style or philosophy in these coming years?

A: When I reach ten million, I'll do less options trading and lean much more toward common stocks—because after all, the risk of options is still higher than common stocks.

Because when you have ten million, basically preserving value is more important than gaining value. At that point risk management becomes even more important; You need to be even more cautious.

Q: For investors currently working toward their wealth goals, what would you like to say?

A: You're now working toward the million-dollar goal. All I can say is: keep learning and understand the trend—that's the most important thing.

Of course, manage your risk and balance your risk, but don't balance your risk too excessively. I was also once that investor who took risk very seriously, but when you take risk too seriously, your portfolio basically won't make much progress.

Find the right balance with risk. At the right time, take on more risk—that will also make it easier for you to reach million-dollar territory.

XI. Suggestions for Tiger

Q: In what ways do you think the Tiger app helps you the most?

A: Tiger's trading experience is very good, quite nice. On the information side, it's also a decent platform.

It also has a lot of good educational content and encourages in many ways—there are investing KOLs writing articles, and these articles do a decent job educating the broad investor base. Tiger is a great learning platform and a great platform for getting information.

Q: Besides our platform, what other channels do you use for industry news?

A: For all financial news, I mainly go through two platforms: CNBC and Bloomberg—in my view, those are the most accurate channels.

Of course, if you want the fastest news, it's actually social media. X is actually a decent platform—like Weibo in China, abroad it's X. Basically any news can appear on your phone within seconds, faster than any platform.

Golden Quotes

On Stock Picking "In a sunset industry, your valuation may look low, very attractive—but it's a sunset industry, and I won't put my money in there."

On the AI Cycle "The next 5 years will be like smartphones back in the day, like Netflix back in the day, like electric vehicles. We're still at a fairly early beginning."

On Storage "The cycle has gotten bigger, gotten longer. Because this cycle is longer, the storage industry will reap more benefits, and those benefits will be returned to shareholders."

On Leverage "Leveraged ETFs have too much volatility, which often makes you unable to hold. When your losses reach a certain pain point, you'll be forced to dump your positions."

On Risk "Industry risk can wipe you out overnight. Literally overnight."

On Goals "When you take risk too seriously, your portfolio won't make much progress. At the right time, take on more risk."

Risk Disclosure and Disclaimer

The content of this article is a sharing of the interviewee's personal investment experience and views, and does not constitute any investment advice or recommendation for any security or industry. Individual stocks, industries, and strategies mentioned in the article are solely for the purpose of narrating the interviewee's thought process. Options trading carries high risk and may result in total loss of principal; it is not suitable for all investors. Leveraged products are significantly more volatile than ordinary stocks. The interviewee's historical returns do not represent future performance, nor do they represent that other investors can achieve similar results. Investors should make independent decisions based on their own financial situation, risk tolerance, and investment objectives, and consult licensed professionals when necessary. The market carries risks; invest with caution.