Man, April 2020. What a time. Everyone was locked down, half-terrified, half-bored out of their minds. I was juggling working from the dining room table, trying to keep my sanity, and mostly just doom-scrolling. That’s how I ended up doing something seriously dumb: I actually read my career horoscope.
I know, I know. I’m a grown-up, I deal with spreadsheets and actual numbers, not cosmic guidance. But everything felt upside down, so I figured, why not look for a sign, even a fake one? I Googled “Virgo career horoscope April 2020.”
The So-Called “Surprise” That Kickstarted Everything
The prediction was ridiculous. It rambled on about a major, unexpected financial surprise and told Virgos to trust their gut on a non-traditional investment path. It literally said something about ’embracing the digital shift and communication technologies.’ I remember snorting at the screen. But then I stopped.
The world was fundamentally shifting, right? Everyone was stuck at home. My gut wasn’t telling me to buy lottery tickets; my gut was screaming that the way we worked and learned was changing forever. I took that flaky horoscope message—the “embrace digital communication” part—and decided to treat it like a slightly less obvious market report. I didn’t believe the stars were aligned, but I believed the market was about to lose its mind.
I decided I was going to document the process of turning cosmic nonsense into real-world financial due diligence.
Executing the Financial Practice: From Zero to Due Diligence
The first thing I did was pull up my old broker account. It was dusty. I hadn’t touched it properly since late 2018. I had a decent chunk of cash sitting there, mostly saved for a home improvement project that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon because, well, the world was closed.
My practice started with two simple questions:
- What does a remote, locked-down world absolutely need?
- What company stock has been absolutely hammered because of the panic, but whose product is now essential?
I ignored the big, sexy tech companies for a minute. Everyone was talking about them already. I zeroed in on the infrastructure. People needed to talk, learn, and entertain themselves from home. I started combing through earnings reports from Q4 2019 and predictions for Q1 2020. Most of the projections were useless because they were pre-pandemic, but I was looking for companies that were already debt-light and scalable.
I didn’t use any fancy tools. I just used the built-in screeners my brokerage offered and Google News. I filtered out travel, hospitality, and energy stocks immediately—too much uncertainty. I focused my energy entirely on:
- Small-cap SaaS companies specializing in enterprise communication.
- Gaming hardware/software companies that looked cheap relative to expected usage spikes.
- The overlooked logistics companies supporting e-commerce surges.
This whole process took me about ten days of intense, after-hours staring at my monitor. My wife thought I was crazy, especially since I kept muttering about a horoscope.
The Moment of Truth: Pulling the Trigger
The market was still volatile. Every day felt like a coin flip. But I had identified three specific positions that looked ridiculously undervalued, solely based on the sudden, permanent shift to remote life. One was a conferencing software company that everyone had forgotten about; the second was a payment processing platform; the third was a semiconductor supplier for cloud computing centers.
I moved 70% of that home improvement savings fund into those three positions. It was the largest single investment I had ever made based purely on current economic observation, overriding all the fear being peddled on cable news.
I clicked “Buy,” felt my stomach drop, and immediately logged out. I knew if I looked at the prices hourly, I’d panic and sell when the inevitable dips happened. My plan was to set it and forget it until the end of the year.
The Real Expert Financial Analysis: Reviewing the Records
Fast forward to December 2020. I finally logged back in, bracing myself for a bloodbath. I swear my hands were shaking as I entered my password. When the portfolio summary loaded, I had to blink a few times. The positions I had bought—based on the vague prompt of a Virgo horoscope—had massively outperformed the broader index.
The surprise wasn’t cosmic; it was contextual.
The expert financial analysis, in the end, was just this: I had correctly identified a permanent behavior change (remote everything) and invested in the cheap infrastructure supporting that change. The horoscope was just the mental trick I played on myself to overcome analysis paralysis and actually commit to the decision. It gave me permission to be bold when everyone else was hunkering down.
I realized two things from this whole messy experience: First, never trust a horoscope. Second, if you can clearly identify a global, forced behavioral change that impacts billions of people, the resulting financial opportunities are rarely subtle. You just need to have the stomach to execute while others are still freezing.
That initial 70% investment? By mid-2021, it had grown enough that I not only funded the home improvement project but had a sizable buffer left over. It wasn’t the stars that delivered the surprise; it was simply documenting the obvious shifts and having the guts to apply real money to the analysis.
