What the shittest investor learned after a full year of loss.

[K. S. Shin]

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.

 

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[Kak]

Lol. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Look at Cathie Woods. She hasn’t just lost her own money. She lost everyone’s money.

What I always have to remind myself is that so few people beat the market it makes little sense to do much other than buy the SPY or maybe long term leaps on the SPY. Yet, I do anyway. Long term, the casino usually wins.

Buffett's Bet with the Hedge Funds: And the Winner Is …

In 2008, Warren Buffett placed a million-dollar bet that an S&P 500 index fund would beat the funds of funds hedge fund managers would select.

www.investopedia.com

Any time I get too wrapped up in my trading account, I remind myself of this, and simple up.

 

[biophase]

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.

When I was younger, I tried investing like you did. I think the biggest problem I had while investing was that I was always thinking about what I could have bought with the money. If I invested $10k and it dropped to $8k, I would be wishing I didn't invest and just spent the $2k on fun stuff. If the $10 went up to $12k, then I'd be tempted to sell and take profits and spend the $2k.

Honestly, stock investing never really worked for me. I think that's why real estate how been much better for me. It forced me to buy and hold. My oldest property is one I bought in 2005. It's really hard to sell and not very liquid.

I had $24k of Tesla stock in 2013 and if I would still have it today it would be worth over $4M, but there's no way I would have held it this long. It's fairly easy to dump stocks when they are down and buy more when they are running up. This is one reason I don't check the markets or crypto often.

I think once it is drilled into your head that you can't time the market, you just let go and let the investments do their thing with time. Now, I just buy stocks and let them ride. If you can mentally tell yourself that you are investing for your 40yo self it will be much easier then investing to try to buy a nice car in 2 years.

I have a friend who has owned one stock for 10 years. He hasn't bought or sold. Just holding and holding. Ironically, the longer you invest, the less you need the money.

 

[Antifragile]

Can’t wait to celebrate Bitcoin hitting $50k with all my family members that I told to buy when it was at $60k


On a more serious note. I don't know anyone (rich or poor) who hasn't made dumb investment mistakes (myself included). The key is to learn from them. I've once invested borrowed money into high-risk stocks. 2008 happened and wiped it out. I made more money and once I was "wealthy", decided to invest in private companies. First one out of the gate was a game developer with a 7 year track record and big office. 6 figures investment seemed "safe", 3 months later they were bankrupt and I learned a lot about bankruptcy process. Each time I took away lessons. Hard, painful lessons.

Don't be like a cat that sat on a hot stove and won't come near the cold stove either. The trick is to learn to invest better with the right probability skew of success.


Edit: my advice is age old wisdom, be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

 

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[Matt Sun]

I like you got into crypto, in 2017 my 6K investment was a lot of money at the time, 1 year later became something like $1.5K so 75% loss.... Nice. Thing is I didn't sell ever and in 2020 It became like 15K, then 25 K, And still didn't sold lol so then April 2021 happened, it crashed, I still doubled my initial 6K but it took me years and sweat and tears.
There are multiple lessons, never fomo, act like you have all the time in the world to buy the asset you want, because not many act like this, and opportunities do arrive for the patience ones (which are few).

Also one thing I think I've done right is never leverage. Sure perhaps you can make a lot of money in theory and some might actually do it, but making a bet in which wild volatility can make all your money vanish, in crypto which is the most volatile asset type ever... is beyond my comprehension how this sounds like a good idea. Buy and hodl an asset in which you truly believe in seems to be the formula that works for me perhaps given my personality or something.

 

[ZF Lee]

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.

Lol. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Look at Cathie Woods. She hasn’t just lost her own money. She lost everyone’s money.

What I always have to remind myself is that so few people beat the market it makes little sense to do much other than buy the SPY or maybe long term leaps on the SPY. Yet, I do anyway. Long term, the casino usually wins.

Buffett's Bet with the Hedge Funds: And the Winner Is …

In 2008, Warren Buffett placed a million-dollar bet that an S&P 500 index fund would beat the funds of funds hedge fund managers would select.

www.investopedia.com

Any time I get to wrapped up in my trading account, I remind myself of this, and simple up.

There is a big difference between trading and investing.

OP's approach is closer to trading rather than HODL for the long term...and the former would need a good technical analysis strategy, take-profit and CL rules. Pretty much a skill just like woodworking or fishing.

And definitely you cannot use money you can't afford to lose.

While I do trade stocks, sometimes when there's good openings, I just paper trade to test my technical analysis strategies and risk management. That way I don't go dump in more capital...it is the strategy that matters.

And I think OP's coins allocation is too big...maybe should just keep to 2-5% of the portfolio? The bulk of investing can go to the value stocks, dividends, ETFs, mutual funds...traditional stuff.

On a more serious note. I don't know anyone (rich or poor) who hasn't made dumb investment mistakes (myself included).

Just like entrepreneurship...we learn best from mistakes in investing or trading.

 

[K. S. Shin]

Lol. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Look at Cathie Woods. She hasn’t just lost her own money. She lost everyone’s money.

What I always have to remind myself is that so few people beat the market it makes little sense to do much other than buy the SPY or maybe long term leaps on the SPY. Yet, I do anyway. Long term, the casino usually wins.

Buffett's Bet with the Hedge Funds: And the Winner Is …

In 2008, Warren Buffett placed a million-dollar bet that an S&P 500 index fund would beat the funds of funds hedge fund managers would select.

www.investopedia.com

Any time I get to wrapped up in my trading account, I remind myself of this, and simple up.

I used to buy and hold S&P ETF, and it was one of the most profitable investment decisions. Now I don't have any share but I think buying SPY will be a good decision whenever it is. And I also think many people, including me, are here to be a casino house in their own field. As you say, the one who triumpths in the long run is house, not a gambler.

When I was younger, I tried investing like you did. I think the biggest problem I had while investing was that I was always thinking about what I could have bought with the money. If I invested $10k and it dropped to $8k, I would be wishing I didn't invest and just spent the $2k on fun stuff. If the $10 went up to $12k, then I'd be tempted to sell and take profits and spend the $2k.

Honestly, stock investing never really worked for me. I think that's why real estate how been much better for me. It forced me to buy and hold. My oldest property is one I bought in 2005. It's really hard to sell and not very liquid.

I had $24k of Tesla stock in 2013 and if I would still have it today it would be worth over $4M, but there's no way I would have held it this long. It's fairly easy to dump stocks when they are down and buy more when they are running up. This is one reason I don't check the markets or crypto often.

Real estate is also a hot stuff in my country. House price in Seoul almost doubled within a year. Other than its property of forced long-term HODL, real estate is a scarce asset itself, making it a really good long-term asset. I think less liquidity asset can be sometimes better since it shuts down thinking of other investing options.

The trick is to learn to invest better with the right probability skew of success.

Simple word, sounds easy, but really hard to execute. This is because a person can't let go of its emotion when it comes to investing. Calculating proper probability while emotion kicking in is almost impossible for me. If I would do investing again, I'd rather let computer do the investing job, which can do proper risk analysis and probability calculation.

I like you got into crypto, in 2017 my 6K investment was a lot of money at the time, 1 year later became something like $1.5K so 75% loss.... Nice. Thing is I didn't sell ever and in 2020 It became like 15K, then 25 K, And still didn't sold lol so then April 2021 happened, it crashed, I still doubled my initial 6K but it took me years and sweat and tears.

I awared of cryptos even before 2017 but never invested thinking that cryptos are nothing but scam. When bitcoin surged over $10k in 2017, my thought didn't change. Really impressive that you didn't sell crypto after 2018 crash and HODL till now. If I invested crypto back in 2017 in faced the crash, I would definitely sold everything with a huge loss.
I also think what people call "crashes" happened in 2021 are not a real crash. Everyone is believing in $100k bitcoin, which is going to happen someday in the future. Drops in 2021 would be just a road bump before a second run.

While I do trade stocks, sometimes when there's good openings, I just paper trade to test my technical analysis strategies and risk management. That way I don't go dump in more capital...it is the strategy that matters.

And I think OP's coins allocation is too big...maybe should just keep to 2-5% of the portfolio? The bulk of investing can go to the value stocks, dividends, ETFs, mutual funds...traditional stuff.

Haha thanks for your concern. I also have some ETF and value stocks which amounts to about half of my portfolio. And most of my coin portfoli consists of stablecoins, whose value barely changes over time. My stretrgy is providing stablecoin liquidity to pool and getting reward.

 

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[Andreas Thiel]

Won't read all replies so I will probably repeat what others wrote. First, one first thought was that you write extremely well. Your English is off the charts great in my book.
Another thing I thought is that you are not just learning from your mistakes if you make the changes you are planning to make, you are changing your risk profile.

There was probably a reason why you Yolod in the first place, are you sure 10% gains per year will make you happy, or are you still secretly hoping to triple your investments over the course of two years? Sounds like you are betting on slow lane mechanics to do wonders for you, now. Are you sure you remember the pots and their purpose correctly?

I am doing pretty well in the shitty speculator (never saw myself as an investor) category myself. Lost probably around 12k (Euro) with bets in shares and knockouts. I did make 6k with long term investments in ETFs and mutual funds over a longer period of time. I'm not beating myself up because I know my high risk profile, that having it all in ETFs wouldn't have gotten me where I want to be either and I only put in money I was prepared to lose. I see little difference between having 30k or 45k at my disposal for projects that might create equity / assets, so I am okay with the risk.
Edit: forgot ... I did do pretty well with bitcoin, so I might even be somewhere around 0 overall, currently.

In the current environment I think ETFs and mutual funds will take a beating within 2 years. Have moved a lot from equity funds into a mutual fund around government bonds in order to rebalance after a crash or dip. Have done that before and it has contributed to my somewhat okay performance in long term investments.

Edit 2: A while ago (1-2 years) I was comfortable with bitcoin around 35k. Sold significantly above that level. Now some time has passed and I think 50k might be a reasonable level for a longer term bet again.

And what about stock picking? The index performance was great mostly because of maybe 4 companies, the others did a lot worse. A few companies will benefit from firesales later, a few don't have to worry about inflation now. S&P ETFs might be convenient, but they might be a bad choice for a relatively long and exceptional time period. It was tech that is responsible for much of the gains in my long term bets, so why choose s&p 500 over nasdaq, especially with ESG bullying traditional businesses?

 

[K. S. Shin]

Won't read all replies so I will probably repeat what others wrote. First, one first thought was that you write extremely well. Your English is off the charts great in my book.

haha thank you mate. Good to know that my writing is not that bad.

There was probably a reason why you Yolod in the first place, are you sure 10% gains per year will make you happy, or are you still secretly hoping to triple your investments over the course of two years? Sounds like you are betting on slow lane mechanics to do wonders for you, now. Are you sure you remember the pots and their purpose correctly?

So I think I need to elaborate on my decision to answer this. The switch towards slow and long-term persceptive is based on time-reward tradeoff.

Contemplating on where should I invest to triple my savings consumes much more time and effort than putting it in S&P and let it be. Of course the latter gives much lower return. However, I can companstate the gap by focusing saved time on improving skills other than investing.

Plus, considering my current amount of saving, I think that tripling my saving is much easier by getting a salary from job than studying investing.(Yes. I know that job is a representative of slowlane, but I think that job experience is somewhat important to be a successful entrepreneur,) Instead of learning how to invest, I can learn skills which is more certain and practical(data analysis for example). I also think that they're more helftul than investing skill in both job field and entrepreneur field.

So for now, leaning less towards high-risk high-return investing is not a slowlane. It's more like a deviation from "fastlane as an investor" and seeking fastlane from another field.

And for the pots you mentioned, I read through the article. So if my understanding is right, the pots is for ensuring the highest return for the institution that bore the highest risk in IPO process. Yes. High return always comes along with high risk. And it must precede proper risk analysis. My deviation also serves this purpose. I'm not giving up on every risky asset. I'm just constructing my philosophy and risk profile to make proper risk analysis possible, which is DCA.

I am doing pretty well in the shitty speculator (never saw myself as an investor) category myself. Lost probably around 12k (Euro) with bets in shares and knockouts. I did make 6k with long term investments in ETFs and mutual funds over a longer period of time. I'm not beating myself up because I know my high risk profile, that having it all in ETFs wouldn't have gotten me where I want to be either and I only put in money I was prepared to lose. I see little difference between having 30k or 45k at my disposal for projects that might create equity / assets, so I am okay with the risk.
Edit: forgot ... I did do pretty well with bitcoin, so I might even be somewhere around 0 overall, currently.

Yes. I also agree that risky assets play a crucial role in the journey of fastlane. But while choosing where to invest, I wanted to stop my emotion from hampering my decision. Even if my loss is what I can afford, thought of "I was wrong" persists. That's where DCA kicks in to automize investing activity as if it is a regular saving. Sounds a bit like slowlane, but I think separating emotion from investment decision is more important. And slowing down a bit in this process is inevitable.

And what about stock picking? The index performance was great mostly because of maybe 4 companies, the others did a lot worse. A few companies will benefit from firesales later, a few don't have to worry about inflation now. S&P ETFs might be convenient, but they might be a bad choice for a relatively long and exceptional time period. It was tech that is responsible for much of the gains in my long term bets, so why choose s&p 500 over nasdaq, especially with ESG bullying traditional businesses?

I think S&P and nasdaq shouldn't be judged as a "bad" or "good" investment option. They should be treated as a "default", like a must-consider category in investing. Even when I YOLOed and lost everyting, I had some shares of S&P ETF although I didn't invest much.
In this context, I also think that S&P are nasdaq are indifferent. There's no better or worse among default options.

Finally, I didn't understand the word of "ESG bullying". Does it mean that traditional businesses are using ESG as a marketing strategy not only to institutions but also to the public?
When it comes to ESG, I think the concept is pretty valid, only if its usage is limited to an another investment option for institutions. If the ESG is used in commercial marketing, I think it's the misdirection. This is what I want to call as an "ESG bullying". For ESG to be used as an marketing strategy to everyone, it still needs a time.

 

[Antifragile]

I think that tripling my saving is much easier by getting a salary from job than studying investing.(Yes. I know that job is a representative of slowlane, but I think that job experience is somewhat important to be a successful entrepreneur,) Instead of learning how to invest, I can learn skills which is more certain and practical(data analysis for example). I also think that they're more helftul than investing skill in both job field and entrepreneur field.

I think that having a job to pay your bills is a good thing. Having a job to help you become an entrepreneur is not.

One addiction is bigger than coffee in this world - it is a salary.

I'll tell you a story. A little over a decade ago I was in Shanghai, fortunate enough to meet a local wealthy person. This person was significantly older than me and already managed to build 7 businesses, taking 3 of them public! (Note, in Asia, taking company public is a way of cashing out, not just raising funds - so think of his decisions are safety move that would not apply in NA).

He tells me to quit my job and start a business and to do it now. I listened but didn't hear his message until years later. He explained that capable people do well in careers and business. But when you are focusing on career, you aren't learning business. You can only learn business by doing. Worse yet, the higher you climb that career ladder, the more you now have to "lose" by giving up that fat salary. And most never do. I wanted his succeed, but I didn't want "the risk". So I kept on doing what I was doing, side hustles and focused mostly on my career. It was a smashing success. I got to the C suite role, got invited to speak at universities, panels, events. Made decent money too - more than your average person. Side hustles kept being just that - side hustles. I was the "Rat" MJ describes in his latest book. Capital R because I was very good at it.

Only when my FTE happened and I not only quit my job, I left behind "performance based compensation" that I don't even want to post on a public forum, it was big. My mentor back then told me that "it is the price, if you want it, you have to pay it. You can't have your cake and eat it too".

Starting a business later in your career also sucks for another reason. You now have more than money to lose. You now have a reputation. Most people aren't rooting for your success. Your peers, "friends" are mostly looking to the time when you fail to smile and say "I saw that coming".

The moral of the story is this - you are on the right track in your thinking. With little capital don't try to make big returns, it's not good math. Probability is not on your side. Get a job to pay bills. But focus not on the job, focus on building a business. Years after my talk in Shanghai, having experienced it on my own skin, I can attest - there is only one way of learning entrepreneurship - it is by doing. And the best investment there is - is an investment in yourself!

Hope this helps. Merry X-mas

 

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[K. S. Shin]

I think that having a job to pay your bills is a good thing. Having a job to help you become an entrepreneur is not.

One addiction is bigger than coffee in this world - it is a salary.

I'll tell you a story. A little over a decade ago I was in Shanghai, fortunate enough to meet a local wealthy person. This person was significantly older than me and already managed to build 7 businesses, taking 3 of them public! (Note, in Asia, taking company public is a way of cashing out, not just raising funds - so think of his decisions are safety move that would not apply in NA).

He tells me to quit my job and start a business and to do it now. I listened but didn't hear his message until years later. He explained that capable people do well in careers and business. But when you are focusing on career, you aren't learning business. You can only learn business by doing. Worse yet, the higher you climb that career ladder, the more you now have to "lose" by giving up that fat salary. And most never do. I wanted his succeed, but I didn't want "the risk". So I kept on doing what I was doing, side hustles and focused mostly on my career. It was a smashing success. I got to the C suite role, got invited to speak at universities, panels, events. Made decent money too - more than your average person. Side hustles kept being just that - side hustles. I was the "Rat" MJ describes in his latest book. Capital R because I was very good at it.

Only when my FTE happened and I not only quit my job, I left behind "performance based compensation" that I don't even want to post on a public forum, it was big. My mentor back then told me that "it is the price, if you want it, you have to pay it. You can't have your cake and eat it too".

Starting a business later in your career also sucks for another reason. You now have more than money to lose. You now have a reputation. Most people aren't rooting for your success. Your peers, "friends" are mostly looking to the time when you fail to smile and say "I saw that coming".

The moral of the story is this - you are on the right track in your thinking. With little capital don't try to make big returns, it's not good math. Probability is not on your side. Get a job to pay bills. But focus not on the job, focus on building a business. Years after my talk in Shanghai, having experienced it on my own skin, I can attest - there is only one way of learning entrepreneurship - it is by doing. And the best investment there is - is an investment in yourself!

Hope this helps. Merry X-mas

Thank you for reminding me of a point I forgot. Purpose of job should be bills, not the career itself.

The one who told me "to be a successful entrepreneur, be a successful worker." was also a highly successful entrepreneur. He is now running a startup whose yearly revenue is around $150m. The logic under the word is following.

- Ability to make others work for me: This is what a successful entrepreneur and a successful worker have in common.

- Success in your workplace works as a reference as well as reputation. It also helps you construct better social network. (Ironically, this goes directly against your statement.)

Maybe some cultural difference(In my countty, large portion of people think that being a Samsung employee is better than starting own business) or some selection bias. But regardless of the difference, I think the most important part is "making others work for me", which is most difficult as well. Investing in self is necessary to achieve this, I think.

Merry christmas for you too. Although christmas has already passed in here

 

[Andreas Thiel]

haha thank you mate. Good to know that my writing is not that bad.

I mean it!

And for the pots you mentioned, I read through the article. So if my understanding is right, the pots is for ensuring the highest return for the institution that bore the highest risk in IPO process. Yes. High return always comes along with high risk. And it must precede proper risk analysis. My deviation also serves this purpose. I'm not giving up on every risky asset. I'm just constructing my philosophy and risk profile to make proper risk analysis possible, which is DCA.

I am still not sure I get what hopes are attached to investing. When I mentioned pots I meant the different components of your overall money system.
I am not sure investing in long term equity is a good idea ... maybe even that worrying about investing is a great idea.
I'll have to refresh my memory regarding the money systems theory from the books, but I am pretty sure you can't expect much return until you have larger sums for larger bets to unlock the potential of compounding.
Until you can do that it might be the better bet to invest it all in business endeavors and in learning materials like courses.
I think there is the emergency fund that you might want to look into strengthening, but what you describe might be trying to build a paycheck pot when it is really based on bad math in your situation. People with a better understanding of how the money system priorities are, please correct me if I am wrong.

Yes. I also agree that risky assets play a crucial role in the journey of fastlane. But while choosing where to invest, I wanted to stop my emotion from hampering my decision. Even if my loss is what I can afford, thought of "I was wrong" persists. That's where DCA kicks in to automize investing activity as if it is a regular saving. Sounds a bit like slowlane, but I think separating emotion from investment decision is more important. And slowing down a bit in this process is inevitable.

Yes, I think the books mention that is does make sense to build even a small paycheck pot because it conditions your brain to think in terms of money making money for you. If you'd put money into IBM now (something I consider doing) you'd get 5%, I think. If you invest 10k and it helps your brain understand on a subconscious level that the 40 you make each month prove that at some point you can make 10k the same way, then there is value in this approach, but just worrying about if your ETF go up or down, I am not sure this will help your beliefs or emotions, so I suggest maybe it makes more sense to worry about investing that way later.

I think S&P and nasdaq shouldn't be judged as a "bad" or "good" investment option. They should be treated as a "default", like a must-consider category in investing. Even when I YOLOed and lost everyting, I had some shares of S&P ETF although I didn't invest much.
In this context, I also think that S&P are nasdaq are indifferent. There's no better or worse among default options.

What I read between the lines is that you want to get in the game without working on your understanding of the mechanics behind the machine. You are not really looking to get more financially literate. For me this sounds like a suboptimal idea, kinda violating the commandment of control and just hoping for good outcomes.

Finally, I didn't understand the word of "ESG bullying". Does it mean that traditional businesses are using ESG as a marketing strategy not only to institutions but also to the public?
When it comes to ESG, I think the concept is pretty valid, only if its usage is limited to an another investment option for institutions. If the ESG is used in commercial marketing, I think it's the misdirection. This is what I want to call as an "ESG bullying". For ESG to be used as an marketing strategy to everyone, it still needs a time.

I expect traditional companies to do worse, because across the s&p many companies will have a hard time meeting ESG requirements. Those who are not in the in-crowd will decline over time. There will be bad news in earnings calls where they announce ESG transitions cost more and take longer than expected (that is what I call ESG bullying).

I suspect that governance will be the biggest issue. There will be socialists elected into the boards and their good intentions will simply drive companies into ruin slowly but surely. New companies that have no historic baggage that they need to transition away from will do better. That is why I think looking into things and improving your odds is a must if you decide to go for becoming / stick with being an investor.

 

[K. S. Shin]

I am still not sure I get what hopes are attached to investing. When I mentioned pots I meant the different components of your overall money system.
I am not sure investing in long term equity is a good idea ... maybe even that worrying about investing is a great idea.
I'll have to refresh my memory regarding the money systems theory from the books, but I am pretty sure you can't expect much return until you have larger sums for larger bets to unlock the potential of compounding.
Until you can do that it might be the better bet to invest it all in business endeavors and in learning materials like courses.
I think there is the emergency fund that you might want to look into strengthening, but what you describe might be trying to build a paycheck pot when it is really based on bad math in your situation. People with a better understanding of how the money system priorities are, please correct me if I am wrong.

My bad. Didn't know that the pots are the concept introduced in the book since I skipped the last part of the book at the time of reading. Gotta check it out later today.

What I read between the lines is that you want to get in the game without working on your understanding of the mechanics behind the machine. You are not really looking to get more financially literate. For me this sounds like a suboptimal idea, kinda violating the commandment of control and just hoping for good outcomes.

To be precise, I chose to ingore. If I've been financially illiterate, I would've continuously knocked into derivative and have lost everything again.

This decision will definitely seem suboptimal to you because it definitely entails missed alpha. My optimal thinking was like following:

- Both long-term investing and short-term investing give a possibility of alpha, but under my condition long-term investing consumes less time and resource.

- I had limited resources and had to choose only one.

- I chose long-term investing and decided to ingore short-term investing.

- Long-term investing in this context includes both index fund and future paradigm.

I expect traditional companies to do worse, because across the s&p many companies will have a hard time meeting ESG requirements. Those who are not in the in-crowd will decline over time. There will be bad news in earnings calls where they announce ESG transitions cost more and take longer than expected (that is what I call ESG bullying).

I suspect that governance will be the biggest issue. There will be socialists elected into the boards and their good intentions will simply drive companies into ruin slowly but surely. New companies that have no historic baggage that they need to transition away from will do better. That is why I think looking into things and improving your odds is a must if you decide to go for becoming / stick with being an investor.

Never heard about socialist issues. Any reference that I can learn?

 

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[ZF Lee]

It was tech that is responsible for much of the gains in my long term bets, so why choose s&p 500 over nasdaq, especially with ESG bullying traditional businesses?

At least S&P500 has some non-tech like the banks and pharma for some sort of 'hedge'...I'm not too keen on throwing all into Nasdaq to risk a Cathie Wood ARK kind of volatility

But ESG...just looking at how Andy Hall the human rights activist hit my country's glove counters, plantation stocks, and recently, electronic manufacturing services (EMS)...I dunno if ESG is even a legit concern for investing or another scam/conspiracy similar to global warming.

Maybe I'll write something on that one day here.

And most of the ESG mutual funds or ETFs I see just feature the big caps again like Google, banks and Apple. Another means to prop up the markets just like the S&P500 passive investing crowd?

I have a lot of gripes with investing in stocks, for all its benefits. Which is why I try not to fall in love too much with it.

I am not sure investing in long term equity is a good idea ... maybe even that worrying about investing is a great idea.
I'll have to refresh my memory regarding the money systems theory from the books, but I am pretty sure you can't expect much return until you have larger sums for larger bets to unlock the potential of compounding.

Investing in equity is just like buying a business.
Of course though, you don't control the company directly.

But you can vote in the meetings or just vote with your money (portfolio allocations and all).

And yes...the larger sums do help bunches especially for dividend investing and options on the ETFs (if you follow MJ's INSIDERS thread)

Never heard about socialist issues. Any reference that I can learn?

It does not always have to be socialist.
It can also be racism (in my country, public companies need to have some native/majority race director).
Or even regulatory (see the China stocks like BABA)

While I think these are just some regulatory/political risks that is part of daily investing, I feel that its financial warfare taking place between the West and Asia.

Perharps I should bite the bullet and go sign up for Agora's Jim Rickards talks on the financial warfare subject.

 

[Andreas Thiel]

Never heard about socialist issues. Any reference that I can learn?

In this case there are mostly anecdotes that you could look at.
They did really well with the Marvel cinematic universe and I was wondering how they were planning to keep it up and even top that after Endgame. Now their stewardship is visibly woke and they will struggle.

There are game development studios who do the same thing. They ruin franchises by killing the favorite character and introducing a tranny maniac that people are supposed to develop feelings for instead.

They introduce whistleblower programs which might be a good thing for employees, but not for investors.
I think Kickstarter is another case where they made sure that the board is diverse enough and they made many decisions that were problematic and unpopular.

You can look into the "conspiracy theories" that mention the World Economic Forum. Look at the companies that joined initiatives like the "Better Than Cash Alliance" and the "ID2020 / Known Traveler". There is a similar program for tracking the vaccination status ... can't remember the name though. The same companies are behind all those efforts (Accenture, Microsoft, ...). They decide that Enron is one of the more ESG heroic companies out there and it is a fact.
And it seems they want to gobble up market share of those annoying medium and small companies that still exist around the world.
That is why I think people who bet on the right companies will outperform the broad market.

Just a suspicion, but I think the socialist people in companies mean well but are put there as useful idiots that at least rock the boat. The Yuri Bezmenov interviews come to mind here. The theory is that a weak president gets elected and the media incite violence and normalize dehumanizing people to follow the russian playbook for taking over nations.
At some point the goverments will say they are no longer capable of doing what they were created to do and the companies will "have to" swoop in and "take more responsibility". Yuri Bezmenov calls those stages "the crisis" and "normalization".

There are discussions if companies like Faceb... I mean Meta and Apple need a seat at the united nations table? I don't think those theories are too far out there anymore.

 

[NewManRising]

I have had some similar experiences as you have. You also say in your post that you haven't learned anything but I think you have learned a lot.

I think the first time I invested was back in like 2016 and I bought some marijuana stock (a few hundred dollars worth). I knew absolutely nothing about investing or stocks. I ignored it for months and throughout that time the stock went drastically up and down (volatile stock at the time). One day out of the blue when I logged into Robinhood, I noticed I was up and I decided to sell.

Then in 2017, I got into Cryptos. It was a mixed experience but I lost overall. I still didn't know anything about investing and was just picking coins based on randomness. Some positions I made out good and others I lost. Overall, I lost about $4k and got out in 2018.

I jumped into stocks again in 2020, and I had another mixed bag. I did well in some instances and lost big in others. Overall, I lost about $7k in 2020. What is crazy was that the market was so undervalued at the time but I was so inexperienced and let my emotions control my investments. I was focused entirely on short positions.

The lessons I learned was there were several things affecting me:

1) I didn't know shit about research, selecting stocks, understanding fundamentals and/or technical information
2) I was controlled too much by emotion (getting too greedy or panic selling)
3) I allowed myself to be influenced by Youtube channels, investment articles, forums, etc

I decided to switch my whole strategy around. What I learned from 2016 until the end of 2020 was:

• I needed to be more patient and NOT freak out with slight market dips or market downturns. Everything always comes back up.
• Taking time to understand investing, learning the lingo, terminology, doing research, and just educating myself all the time to be a smarter investor.
• Completely ignore Investment articles that promote stocks/cryptos, Youtube channels, and forums, and invest with my own research ( don't jump on a hot stock or cryptos because everyone is talking about it. If they're talking about it, this is a clear sign to stay away)
• Being less greedy. Small and steady gains are better than huge risky bets that can result in huge losses (this is especially crucial if you're a person with a small amount of money)
• If you are learning, it is wiser to start with small amounts of money rather than using your life savings

I've learned that investing is largely an emotional game and you learn this as you play it. I take less risky bets these days and have my money in mostly ETFs and some stocks. The difference now is I am making money. It's not life-changing money but I am making money nonetheless.

With this strategy, it has allowed me to take some distance from it and I don't have to constantly watch it. The strategy also allows me to make money but at a slower pace (and that is OK with me right now).

As I learn more and get ahold of more cash I will spread my investments around more. But, my main focus is to increase my income through a business because I don't have enough money to invest to where it could be life-changing or be a livable income.

Anyway, investing is a journey and takes practice. It is a big emotional game. There is a skill but you develop this over time. Depending on how you allocate your money you can decide to take some riskier bets. I mentioned I have mostly ETFs (safer investments) and I have individual stocks. The individual stocks are riskier but the allocation to stocks is just a small portion of my overall portfolio. Because of this, I am willing to take on a little more risk.

Understanding market cycles is absolutely critical too. Most newbies that invest are way behind the curve and are simply gambling. Just keep learning and get better.

 

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[daivey]

most people trading lose money.
don't get swept up in the wall street bets and all the posers, lying about their "phat" gains.

for every 1 winner, there are 9999 losers at the stock market cashino.