cody_s
New Contributor
Long time lurker, first time poster here.
Please excuse my bad English. It's not my primary language and there can be some awkward contexts.
So... I shall begin my story.
I'm a college student from Korea who is the title itself. The shittest investor in the world, I can say.
I started investing this January. And during this year, I lost roughly 20,000,000₩, 18.000$ in the dollar. But aside from the amount of money I lost, however, what made me really depressed was that almost every investment decision I made was a failure. I know my memory isn't correct, but my gain:loss ratio would sit around 1:6. One good decision with 6 bad decisions.
My (reversed) successful investing career starts with crypto. This February, I YOLOed my savings on Ethereum long futures with leverage when Ethereum was ATH. Now I fully realize that this bet is destined to lose everything, but my February self didn't. After I YOLOed, Ethereum plunged around 30%. My money had literally evaporated. In full despair, I switched my position from long to short, thinking that the market crash will continue. This decision backfired quite hard because that was when Ethereum price was at the local bottom and surged just two days after I switched a position. In the end, I lost all.
After a harsh loss in February, I took a break in investing due to schoolwork. After the semester ends, however, I touched crypto derivative again, seeking a short-term gain. Of course, almost no position I entered was successful. Finally, I lost everything again. The only difference from the first liquidation was the speed of money disappearing from my wallet. I learned nothing from my previous mistake.
Two times of total liquidation taught me that investing in leveraged derivatives to speculate converges to only one result: total loss. And I promised myself not to make the same mistake again. But, I didn't realize that problem wasn't derivative. The real problem was my mentality, especially impatience and decision by emotion(mostly fear). It was my investment habit itself that was dragging me into a recursive loss.
Most of the time I bought an asset that has already swollen thinking "I'm not late in this bull cycle.". But it was actually a decision driven by FOMO(fear of missing out). And evidence that the cycle will go on was the one created from my head. After the cycle, the only thing that waited for me was an endless price drop.
I was obsessed with short-term gain and never allowed periodical drops in holding assets. I was extremely fearful even with a slight loss. This fear sometimes went wild and filled my head with destructive emotion, panic-selling as a result. Every time I panic-sell, what I did was blame myself in frustration while looking at asset prices recover after selling.
Without knowing my true problem, my loss continued to grow. The event that triggered my 'danger signal' happened just a week ago. I heard an investment idea from my friend, and after a short consideration, I placed a bet. And in the time of writing this, This investment is around 20% loss. I think this bad decision could be prevented by more careful risk analysis. But FOMO obscured my vision and forced me to go for it by emotion with no concrete evidence (I had to make an investment decision by the day after I heard the news, which is plenty of time to research). I've always thought to myself that I'm learning from my previous mistake. I wasn't. I've never learned from my mistake. I was faking my action.
Recently, I seriously reflected on my problem and reached a conclusion. As a mental treatment to myself as well as an early New Year's Resolution, I decided to quit short-term investing.
Instead, I'll begin "saving" through DCA(Dollar Cost Averaging) and assets with little risk.
With DCA, I can translate long-term investing into regular saving, eliminating the concern of "Is it a good time to invest?" "Isn't this asset overvalued?". The price will be averaged at all in the long run, making every entry point optimal. It enables to separate FOMO and other time-and-timing-related emotions from the decision. All I should do is just freely search for paradigms that go mainstream in the future and DCA related stocks.
DCA works by accumulating an asset over time and I needed to save the rest of the money elsewhere. This is where ittle-risk assets chime in. I recently found out that stablecoin pair of crypto LP pool is quite lucrative(APR around 20%) while being almost risk-free. Right now I'm saving all of my assets in stablecoun LP pool and DCAing stocks of future tech(quantum computing, for example) and some promising crypto project.
I think combining these two stretegies is the most rational and efficient way to accumulate assets as an incompetent investor. I can save time I used to learn investing and redirect it to improve my productivity and value. Saving is also more positive for mental health since there's no anxiety about whether my investing decision is right or not and no obsession that I should make money quickly.
So.. this is my final conclusion after a year of the painful investment journey. Now I want to listen to your perspective and experience. What conclusion did you reach after investing experience? Which information would you like to share?
And for a final word, learn from failure cases just as I did. On the earth, there're shitloads of failed people and only a tiny fraction of successful people. By focusing on the former, while every other focusing on the latter, we can get information that is more useful, more practical, and more serious.
Also, If you also experienced failure just like me, feel free to share. Sharing failure unburdens your mind. Writing a failure story also gives a deeper understanding of it. I've always thought I am learning from others' failures. However, It was just an illusion and I was faking my action. Now I realized that learning from failure starts from diving deep into MY failure, and sharing with the public.
Please excuse again for my awkward English and remind me anytime of any typo or context error. Thank you.
For anyone who doesn't like to hear a long rant from an incompetent investor and just want the summary:
● I used to invest with an emotional decision without any solid reason.
● I was impatient and sold assets even with a slight drop.
● I wanted to accumulate assets quickly and invested in a leveraged crypto derivative.
● The problems above made me a shit investor who keeps losing money.
● After all of the losses, I decided to stop short-term investing and instead focus on long-term "saving" through DCA and little-risk assets.
● With the "saving" strategy, I expect to separate emotion from the decision-making process and become more mentally healthy.
Please excuse my bad English. It's not my primary language and there can be some awkward contexts.
So... I shall begin my story.
I'm a college student from Korea who is the title itself. The shittest investor in the world, I can say.
I started investing this January. And during this year, I lost roughly 20,000,000₩, 18.000$ in the dollar. But aside from the amount of money I lost, however, what made me really depressed was that almost every investment decision I made was a failure. I know my memory isn't correct, but my gain:loss ratio would sit around 1:6. One good decision with 6 bad decisions.
My (reversed) successful investing career starts with crypto. This February, I YOLOed my savings on Ethereum long futures with leverage when Ethereum was ATH. Now I fully realize that this bet is destined to lose everything, but my February self didn't. After I YOLOed, Ethereum plunged around 30%. My money had literally evaporated. In full despair, I switched my position from long to short, thinking that the market crash will continue. This decision backfired quite hard because that was when Ethereum price was at the local bottom and surged just two days after I switched a position. In the end, I lost all.
After a harsh loss in February, I took a break in investing due to schoolwork. After the semester ends, however, I touched crypto derivative again, seeking a short-term gain. Of course, almost no position I entered was successful. Finally, I lost everything again. The only difference from the first liquidation was the speed of money disappearing from my wallet. I learned nothing from my previous mistake.
Two times of total liquidation taught me that investing in leveraged derivatives to speculate converges to only one result: total loss. And I promised myself not to make the same mistake again. But, I didn't realize that problem wasn't derivative. The real problem was my mentality, especially impatience and decision by emotion(mostly fear). It was my investment habit itself that was dragging me into a recursive loss.
Most of the time I bought an asset that has already swollen thinking "I'm not late in this bull cycle.". But it was actually a decision driven by FOMO(fear of missing out). And evidence that the cycle will go on was the one created from my head. After the cycle, the only thing that waited for me was an endless price drop.
I was obsessed with short-term gain and never allowed periodical drops in holding assets. I was extremely fearful even with a slight loss. This fear sometimes went wild and filled my head with destructive emotion, panic-selling as a result. Every time I panic-sell, what I did was blame myself in frustration while looking at asset prices recover after selling.
Without knowing my true problem, my loss continued to grow. The event that triggered my 'danger signal' happened just a week ago. I heard an investment idea from my friend, and after a short consideration, I placed a bet. And in the time of writing this, This investment is around 20% loss. I think this bad decision could be prevented by more careful risk analysis. But FOMO obscured my vision and forced me to go for it by emotion with no concrete evidence (I had to make an investment decision by the day after I heard the news, which is plenty of time to research). I've always thought to myself that I'm learning from my previous mistake. I wasn't. I've never learned from my mistake. I was faking my action.
Recently, I seriously reflected on my problem and reached a conclusion. As a mental treatment to myself as well as an early New Year's Resolution, I decided to quit short-term investing.
Instead, I'll begin "saving" through DCA(Dollar Cost Averaging) and assets with little risk.
With DCA, I can translate long-term investing into regular saving, eliminating the concern of "Is it a good time to invest?" "Isn't this asset overvalued?". The price will be averaged at all in the long run, making every entry point optimal. It enables to separate FOMO and other time-and-timing-related emotions from the decision. All I should do is just freely search for paradigms that go mainstream in the future and DCA related stocks.
DCA works by accumulating an asset over time and I needed to save the rest of the money elsewhere. This is where ittle-risk assets chime in. I recently found out that stablecoin pair of crypto LP pool is quite lucrative(APR around 20%) while being almost risk-free. Right now I'm saving all of my assets in stablecoun LP pool and DCAing stocks of future tech(quantum computing, for example) and some promising crypto project.
I think combining these two stretegies is the most rational and efficient way to accumulate assets as an incompetent investor. I can save time I used to learn investing and redirect it to improve my productivity and value. Saving is also more positive for mental health since there's no anxiety about whether my investing decision is right or not and no obsession that I should make money quickly.
So.. this is my final conclusion after a year of the painful investment journey. Now I want to listen to your perspective and experience. What conclusion did you reach after investing experience? Which information would you like to share?
And for a final word, learn from failure cases just as I did. On the earth, there're shitloads of failed people and only a tiny fraction of successful people. By focusing on the former, while every other focusing on the latter, we can get information that is more useful, more practical, and more serious.
Also, If you also experienced failure just like me, feel free to share. Sharing failure unburdens your mind. Writing a failure story also gives a deeper understanding of it. I've always thought I am learning from others' failures. However, It was just an illusion and I was faking my action. Now I realized that learning from failure starts from diving deep into MY failure, and sharing with the public.
Please excuse again for my awkward English and remind me anytime of any typo or context error. Thank you.
For anyone who doesn't like to hear a long rant from an incompetent investor and just want the summary:
● I used to invest with an emotional decision without any solid reason.
● I was impatient and sold assets even with a slight drop.
● I wanted to accumulate assets quickly and invested in a leveraged crypto derivative.
● The problems above made me a shit investor who keeps losing money.
● After all of the losses, I decided to stop short-term investing and instead focus on long-term "saving" through DCA and little-risk assets.
● With the "saving" strategy, I expect to separate emotion from the decision-making process and become more mentally healthy.
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