‘God works in mysterious ways’: I became a Nvidia millionaire playing ‘World of Warcraft.’ Am I smart — or just lucky?

In 2010, I was working for a company that was going under, but I didn’t know that. My evil manager was a jerk and manipulated me into quitting by severely and publicly bullying and humiliating me every day. I was too naive at the time to understand this type of manipulation. I decided to quit my job like a boss, but after finding out how I got played, I was devastated. I had no job and no unemployment benefits.

I spent the next year unemployed, at home playing “World of Warcraft.” That’s when I discovered how great Nvidia graphics cards were. One day I got a surprise pension check from the company for over $4,000. I sat on the money for a while, not sure what to do with it. Eventually, I decided to put it all in Nvidia stock. Why not? I thought. It’s just a few thousand dollars, and I like their cards.

• ‘God works in mysterious ways’: I became a Nvidia millionaire playing ‘World of Warcraft.’ Am I smart — or just lucky?

• My sisters want to hide $170,000 of our mother’s money from Medicaid by adding their names to her bank account. What should I do?

• ‘I retired earlier than planned’: I’m 69 and will have $6,000 a month in retirement income. The bulk of my $3.6 million is equities. Is that OK?

• ‘He’s 70 and fairly wealthy’: I met the love of my life three years ago. How do I politely ask that he include me in his will?

• ‘It’s so unfair!’ I’m miserable in my job. I’m 58 and have $1 million in a 401(k) and Roth IRA. Can I afford to quit?

It was literally the first stock I ever bought. Those Nvidia stocks are now worth $2 million. Yes, I became a multimillionaire by quitting my job and playing videogames all day. I’m not really religious, but even I have to think, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’ And that’s my funny story about how Nvidia made me a multimillionaire. What do you think? Did I deserve this windfall? Should I feel guilty or smart or did I just get lucky?

Mr. Lucky or Mr. Smart?

Related: ‘Don’t be naïve’: I have a wake-up call for divorcing women — you’ve been giving up too much for too long. Am I wrong?

In 2010 you were in a funk, and by investing in this stock you were investing in something far more ephemeral — hope.

You saw something others didn’t. There’s a fine line between a stroke of genius and a stroke of luck. And you, my friend, walked it. In 2018, Nvidia made a ride-or-die push to upgrade those graphics cards by revamping the graphics processing units that helped fuel its artificial-intelligence ambitions. Speaking at a conference in Los Angeles last year, Nvidia NVDA CEO Jensen Huang said that he had a “bet-the-company moment.” As TechCrunch reported, Huang said: “It required that we reinvent the hardware, the software, the algorithms and, while we were reinventing CG with AI, we were reinventing the GPU for AI.”