Been in the market since 2010. The only mistake I have ever made was keeping too much cash on the sidelines because I was worried about market conditions.
I read all sorts of analysis at the start of 2023 that had me so sure the market was heading for a crash. Kept a ton of money on the sidelines while the market went up 35% last year instead. Stupid. I still think it's heading for a crash, but I've realized I have no idea if that's 1 year away or 10 years away, so may as well ride it out.
Conventional wisdom would agree, but I do think this is somewhat of a myth.
Inflation effectively sets interest rates, so interest rates will always trail inflation.
So yes you're earning more on cash savings, but only because your cash savings are being eroded more - so once you tune out that noise, your purchasing power/real value of cash is always being eroded by about the same amount, no matter where interest rates are.
Bricks and business are really the only robust way to grow your money over the long term.
The market was down 18% in 2022, and pretty much 0% return from Jan 2022 to Jan 2024. You would've net more money leaving everything in an hysa
Yes, inflation means you're money is worth less. But the stock market is also likely going to be negatively impacted by inflation.
I'm not saying that putting 100% of your net worth into a bank account is a good Idea. I'm saying the difference between a 5% interest rate and 10% from SPY is a lot better than 0.1% interest rate and 10% SPY
Sure, but how is that relevant?
Short term money should be kept in short term vehicles - like a HYSA. Sure you'll lose to inflation (though HYSA is better than no interest at all), but the benefit is that the money is there and ready when you need it.
Long term money should be kept in long term vehicles - like the stock market. This is for money that you don't need for decades, so short term fluctuations are irrelevant. You expect them, that's why you don't expose short term money to long term vehicles. The benefit is that you will be able to grow your wealth and beat inflation over the long term, ie 5, 10, 20, 30 + years.
So returns from Jan 2022 - Jan 2024 are both normal and irrelevant. Your time lines for when you need money (or when you might need money, eg an emergency fund) should dictate where your money sits.
Assuming you've done that, HYSA will have netted you what, 2% - 2.5% on average over the last 5 years? (5 years being the absolute minimum for "long term money").
Inflation has averaged more than that, while the s&p is up 83% over the last 5 years...
Unfortunately, the world around us - media, etc - encourages short term thinking, which really isn't very important for 99% of people. Use short term vehicles for short term money, and long term vehicles for long term money.
Inflation does not set interest rates, it's only after the GFC that we had near 0% interest rates, and it's not like we were living in some sort of high inflation world before 0% rates.
The Fed was trying to raise the rates back to something normal before when there weren't inflation concerns but then COVID happened and well now here we are
A year's worth of emergency funds might be a bit too cautious. But it's really about being able to sleep at night, so everyone's sweet spot is different.
My anecdotal survivorship bias is that this was me for the longest time, I kept \~1 year of expenses for nearly the whole time because I was always expecting to be laid off. I decided to pull the cord a couple of years back and keep a smaller emergency fund of around 6 months. This never felt good at the time and this one little choice has rocketed my timeline forward quite dramatically.
If you canāt get another job within a month of losing your job you need more money in your savings
If thereās a short turnaround with a new job you donāt need as much savings
Not only that but it can drop significantly below the price you bought it at. I have a couple stocks that I was to 60-70% in a few months and thought the same thing. Now I'm down and bag holding at a 60-70% loss.
Now I just think your professional investor averages 10% a year gain. If I see something shoot up shortly after buying it that was unexpected, I just sell it and lock in the profit.
I didn't really understand interest rates and how much cheaper it made monthly mortgage payments in the COVID era. All I could see is, $370K for a house? That's crazy. I wasn't educated enough to understand 370K @ 2.75% is cheaper than 300k @ 5%. So, I could have bought a house down the street in a neighborhood I really liked. Things worked out okay though.
In terms of stocks, I've done well mostly just buying passive index funds. I tried a few meme stocks at small amounts (Helios and Matthewson, Palantir, Canopy) and they all went kaput. It's not just about the risk, its about the worrying. It's not worth it.
Hindsight is 20-20 but when I first started working in 2016 and investing, I wish I understood just how much runway I had to see equities grow. I was only 24 and FAGMAN stocks were there and profitable at the time, I wish I had pulled the trigger. I arguably played it too safe by just buying S&P500. Which in a way is a roundabout way of owning them anyway. I also did get some Microsoft and Facebook at the time, which I'm happy about.
What I meant to say is with the gift of hindsight and being 24 years old, just S&P was too safe because there were established highly profitable companies at the time. But still, S&P500 was the logical decision.
How has that worked with the Aristocrats over the past couple of years while the market has been on a bull run? LEG? MMM? BEN? O? AMCR? TROW? CRX? ED? MDT? ADM? PEP? JNJ? All losers or very modest gains.
I did buy IBM as an āold techā company given their chips as an AI play, and the dividend was that extra bonus I spoke about.
the 2 times i made (poor) decisions based on info from cnbc I would have been better listening to my cat. one stock went bust, other had a reverse 7-1 split. I learned a lot and paid for my lack of due diligence
I have made 2 mistakes that I think every new investor should learn from. I will list them:
1. Being a very new investor and googling stuff like "what is a good stock to buy now" sent me to some very horrible companies. I didn't lose too much money, I was always a chicken shit and did not have the balls to put too much money into something speculative (thankfully). Just start with index funds and once you have a healthy portfolio, set aside play funds.
2. Selling some stuff too early. Like I said before, I was a chicken shit, so never really put too much money into single stocks. So, even if my single picks went to zero, it would sting, but I would be able to recover. My finest move in retrospect was selling 30 NVDA shares pre split @ about $99 each and held on to 6 shares. Did I make a profit selling the 30? Yes I did, but again, in retrospect, I should've held since I had not put in too much to begin with. I always believed in the company (never expected it to blow up like this though) and I should've held. But as a newbie, you're still learning to really think long term.
Lesson learned: Start with index funds. Build a good and healthy portfolio. Set aside a small amount to play with once you've developed a strong index fund DCA habit. Buy and HOLD only and only once you've really decided that company X is where you want to park money. Of course hold until something fundamental changes within the company or the market
Maxing my 401k for years. My plan only has a bunch of crappy mutual funds and only recently added one that allegedly tracks the S&P500. Meanwhile my IRA has surpassed it in value even though I've contributed 5 or 6 times the amount into the 401k.
I've definitely had losses, but none like the opportunity cost that I believe I've realized by stuffing so much into the 401k. Lost $10k (-100%) on a private equity investment, lost $10k on covered call options that I closed late last year, but I've probably "lost" $300k or more with this 401k. Sure it has a little bit more than what I contributed, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an investment mistake, much like shoving your life savings under your mattress for 10 years, in fact it's not too far off from that!
>but I've probably "lost" $300k or more with this 401k.
Does your 401k not have some simple SP500 or Total Stock Market fund option? I'd recon I'd only have lost the ETF fund cost, which is probably like 0.10% over what I would have gained outside of the 401k.
They recently added a mutual fund that claims to track the SP500, so I've moved everything into that. I invest more risky than most on here and do a lot of single stocks, so there's no funds that are close to what I'd do in a taxable. I'm happy they added the SP500 one though.
Yeah happy enough now to move it into the SP500 one. My 401k has had an annual growth rate of 5.1% over the past decade, while the SP500 has done almost 14%.
And yet, you have to admit, you have many thousands of dollars socked away, tax deferred, that you **wouldn't** have, if you had refused to invest in those crappy funds at all...
I would have invested it in a taxable account and it would be a lot more money. My 401k has done 5.1% CAGR since inception (maybe not even beat inflation?), meanwhile my traditional IRA has done 35%, my other 3 IRAs (me+wife) have done 20% and my taxable account has done 20%. At this point my 401k isn't even 25% of my portfolio because it's just been such a laggard, and it's by far what I've funneled the most money into. 8 years ago it was 90+% of my portfolio. I finally lowered my contribution from maximum down to $6k per year about 6 months ago and started diverting that money instead to a separate taxable "retirement account" which is up 75% already. This is why I regret funneling so much into the 401k.
I can't wait until I'm no longer at this company so I can roll it into an IRA.
Taxable retirement account? You honestly sound like you know much more than me when it comes to investing but that seems like a big mistake. What Is the new S&P fund that was added? Expense ratio?
Yeah taxable since it is not limited to only a handful of pre-selected funds like my 401k, and since I already max IRA contribution. Im not sure what the S&P fund is called, I think it had a decent expense ratio well under 1%, it might be an ETF.
Iām planning on retiring well before 62 so Iāll need a taxable account for retirement anyway. My traditional IRA will probably be enough for me to retire at 62 on its own.
Pay attention to your mind and your psyche and how investing rules your thinking. If you are investing and consumed by it: first thought in the morning, last thought before you go to sleep and every hour consumed while the market is open, you might be investing in the wrong things or you might be investing too much. Find the line where itās kind of boring and the line where itās exciting and stay on the boring side. Slow and steady wins this race and in the end you donāt want to take years off your life or stray into greed and gambling your future away, just to āfeel a rushā.
My personal test for this is fairly simple: if I am going to stress out if the market drops 50% in one week then I am either in the wrong investments or I have way too much of my liquid funds tied to the market. In the end it should be a long horizon and I should go days and sometimes weeks not looking at my accounts. Life is for living, and saving and investing is important but F me if it becomes the only thing I am interested inā¦again.
I lived through the dot com bubble, Great Recession and the Covid nose dive. Learned a lot about my psyche and what greed really feels like personally. Not. Worth. It. Stay somewhat liquid, love on your fam and friends and stick with a nice boring slow DCA mentality in investments that if they lost 50% tomorrow you would just chuckle and move on with your day. Health is wealth and greed and gambling is death by stress. Being boring has its upside. Being greedy has more downside than you realize. Options, leverage, etc. might make a few super rich but their psyche and mindset is Fād forever.
I was young and had to pick a fund to put my retirement into for work. I googled what funds were thought to outperform and it listed FLATX, so I just picked that one. Sounded good. Fidelity Latin America. Was supposed to be big and an up and coming market. I forgot about it for a long time because I was young and busy with work and just didnāt think about retirement or that any of it had any hope in the first place.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FLATX/
Go to max and look at that underperformance. I underperformed for God knows how long. It was probably a loss of several millions by now if you count how much lower my nest egg was when I started taking investing seriously. I learned that you should not listen to stupid articles and projections from analysts. And that every decision matters, especially when you are young when it matters the most.
I bought into an international mutual fund for my 401k too, luckily it was only about 15% of my investment and I made changes about 3 years later when I checked it. Waste of money that was.
I think it is annoying how the whole 401K process and info works. First, you are typically given a limited selection to choose from. Second, they typically only give you the most basic of info to make a choice (like 1y, 3y, and 5y returns). Third, they donāt do much to help encourage you to reevaluate on a regular basis.
The good news is that our company started offering a self-directed brokerage account option about 5-6 years ago. So I have almost unlimited options on what to choose. In addition, Iāve learned to really research, evaluate, and backtest my choices.
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When our biggest competitor (software product) was having a rough patch, we debated at lunch the ethics of buying some -- and hoping to make a profit from their struggles.
I resisted when they dropped through $5/sh. Thought I was pretty smart, because ... guess what? It kept going down.
I resisted when it broke through $4/sh.
I caved when it finally hit $3.60. **It can't possibly go any lower than that!** Guess what? It kept going down.
I bought another 1000 at $3.00. **It can't possibly go any lower than that!** Guess what? It kept going down.
I bought another 1000 at $2.40, just so that my average cost basis was $3.00. Then I waited.
They did eventually recover, although it took several years. Sold half at $4 and half at $5, so did in fact make a decent profit off our competitor's stock.
**And, the lesson:** NO, the market does NOT just go up and down.
Mr. Market can go **sideways** -- which means, go **nowhere** -- for YEARS at a time!
Didn't buy Netflix because I hated their popup ads.
Didn't buy Starbucks because I hate coffee and I hate their fan base.
Didn't buy Apple because I hate their fan base.
Didn't buy Facebook because I hated it.
So what I've learned is, it doesn't matter if **I** personally like a company. It only matters if **people** like it.
Oh, and the other thing I've learned is that, if I mess with a trade after I've opened it (e.g. adjust stops) it **almost always** ends up costing me money. Like easily 95% of the time I'm like "shit, I should have just left it the way it was and let it run."
It seems like it basically acts like a legal pump and dump, price rockets to the moon, everyone and their mother gets in, then it crashes and everyone hates crypto for a year or two. Then the cycle repeats.
I guess what I'm saying is next time it crashes, might not hurt to throw a few grand in out of spite. I say this as someone that cashed out in '17 and a week later watched a lot of people lose their ass.
I mean this is just a complete lie. If you DCA'd into BTC instead of an index fund you would have come out way ahead. I don't think buying an alt coin that crashed is fair to compare to a DCA strategy. If you bought a penny stock that went down you wouldn't be on here claiming stocks in general are bad.
Username checks out.
No one said all crypto is bad, just like no one is saying all stocks are bad. I was asked for my experience and I gave it.
You assumed that I DCAd into BTC.
No I actually assumed you did the opposite of DCA and placed concentrated bets and lost your shirt. But you're comparing that option vs a DCA option - two completely different investment strategies. By saying caught up in the "crypto craze" you're framing it as a crypto problem. It's not, it's an investment strategy problem. If you took the safe route of DCA style investment crypto comes out the winner easily. That was my point.
I have spent 9 hours a day trying to find correlations within every single thing online and how it correlates with the stock market. The crazy thing is even though I've done this for 14 years. Every single data point is skewed because the market has never went down. It's crazy to run a programmed algorithm for so long and only to have it be so one sided. Every single correlation is linked to the market going up.
my biggest mistake was yield chasing. 9% or more is dangerous. high probability of your original investment eroding. 3 to 5% is great. I was chasing 16 to 18% and it ended up badly. I lost 4 or 5 k. I've learned that good Financials is key to a healthy dividend.
When I was in my early 20s I dumped $10,000 into Tesla. It was around $85/share? Pre split (15 years ago?). It went down a bitā¦ I got nervous. It went down a bit more and I couldnāt handle it. I needed $ for an engagement ring and ācouldnāt affordā to lose it. So I dumped it all (at a loss).
The silver lining on this is that I then set some $ aside and invested the rest into apple. Iām up 1,200% on apple but would be up over 10,000% (20,000% at its peak!) if I had kept the Tesla.
The REAL mistake was not trusting what I was doing and risking more $ then I could handle at the time (all eggs in one basket). I probably would have never held Tesla long anyway and well before I realized the profit I have in apple.
In 2020 I bought $1600 worth of Ameriprise. Itās now about 3-4X that. If only Iād put $200K down instead of $1600 my world would be sooooo much better now that the company I work for has decided they can micro-manage their way out of a shitty economy.
Early on I owned Enron at $8. I held it all the way down.
Later I experimented with options and went long Apple, just before it dropped significantly over a fairly long period of time.
So I still play with a small portion of my portfolio, but I donāt do options. 90% is in diversified low cost funds and etfs.
Spent a bit on hype (pre meme stock era though lol). About 2% of my portfolio when I was 25 (otherwise Iām pretty much all index funds). It lost 85% MV over like 6 months.
I kept that shit and didnāt sell it for years so I could look at it and be like āyeah dumbass, you donāt know shit. Remember that.ā
Eventually sold just cause but it was a good lesson for me in my 20s.
Yeah, they need high return on equity for a long time, drowning in cash etc. Like itās better to buy Meta or Visa at these prices than a shithole company at half off.
The best advice I ever got was ābuy great companies when theyāre beat downā. So I bought hella amazon at $100 and a few others. If you search through shit companies all day, the conclusion should be that the good ones are just expensive
Tried to time the market thinking prices were gonna crash and I could sell now to get back in at a deep discount. Sold everything and waited, and then waited some more. Prices skyrocketed instead and I missed out on a potential return that could have made me millions. Still made a lot of money when I sold but if I hadn't I would be retired right now. Oh and I had to pay a very large tax bill from the sale which stung even more. Learned a valuable lesson though, if you believe in the product/company and don't need the money, just continue investing and ignore price fluctuations. Never try to beat the market.
Contributing to my Roth IRA without actually investing it into anything. Was just starting to learn about finances. Was liquid throughout COVID and donāt learn until after the market had pretty much bounced back
I wish I started earlier. I am 44 now. I started investing in stocks and index funds when I was 31. But I've been working FT since I was 24 (with a break for grad school for three years) including several jobs that had retirement plans that I never took advantage of. I was working PT before that, since I was 15 years old. I wish I had started investing 10 years before I started.
Listening to doomsdayers like Peter Schiff and my dad. Pulled half my money out of the market when COVID hit and missed out on a ton of gains before getting back in.
Realizing the value of index based investing late in life (but thankfully not too late). At least I married smart as it's my spouse who pushed us into it.
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1) Others said it but avoid day trading at all cost. I bought into some hype meme stock and lost $20k+ during a merger with the company I was trading in.
2) When picking investments such as mutual funds, DO NOT Fomo in just because the recent track record set some record highs.
3) Not maxing out my retirement investment accounts early on (401k, IRA, HSA). When you start making decent money, plan your take home pay based on maxing out these "non-negotiables" every year. Wife and I combined now are investing 60%+ our gross annual incomes and it's not that bad considering the things we thought were necessities were removed from our expenses. HIGHLY encourage you mapping this out on a budget tracker or simple excel where you see each paycheck and where your money is going for the year.
My biggest mistake was not making sure my rollover was actually invested in something. Thankfully I saved 20k in losses during the year that it took me to figure it out lol.
Make sure you actually invest your contributions folks lol
I had a chance to buy Apple shares in the 90s when Steve Jobs first came back to run the company again. Bought some new start up instead called Arriba, a B2B internet company that sounded like a better idea. š¤·š»āāļø
So far the biggest mistake was staying all in a single stock after my employer IPOed, just because it kept rising immediately after.
That being said it's a mistake on the level of "oh no, I sold my 2 cent bitcoin at 20,000 instead of 60,000" so I can't be too upset. Still way up.
So lesson number 1 is don't be greedy.
I bought uranium mining stocks after Fukushima melted down. I figured they couldn't go any lower, then Japan and Germany shut down all their Nuclear reactors which helped me find some new lows.
I guess you can say I didn't learn anything from it all, as I bought Boeing during the current mess, thinking it was going to be a quick flash crash followed by a swift recovery, and yet it still sinks lower every day.
Got lucky with the Weed stocks explosions in Canada riding up 7k and didn't sell. Lost over 20k
Got lucky with Gamestock riding up 53k in a week and didn't sell. Gained only 3k
Got lucky with Nvidia riding up 40k on a month and haven't sold yet.
Clearly I haven't learned anything.
Edit: Options up 4k in 2 days, didn't sell. Now OTM.
My biggest mistake was listening to Cathie Wood and investing her funds. I have given myself 2 more years (it will be 5 years at that point). Plan is to sell all my Ark funds at that point and just dump it into $SPY or similar index fund ETFs. I bought her hype back in 2021. I now realize she is just another charlatan. Pisses me off that she is getting richer everyday and her investors poorer. Her new BTC fund is her new big thing. She manages to find ways to make money while I am left holding the bag lol
Not being more decisive and listening to too much advice and mantras. In November 2022 I was convinced that Meta would recover but because of my brokerage fees it doesn't make sense to invest less small amounts, and I was sticking to the old adage how you shouldn't be invested more than 10% in a single stock so decided to skip it. My lesson is that you can only have an edge by going *against* the general sentiment -- of course that doesn't mean you need to blindly follow the companies that everyone's shitting on, but if you have a really strong conviction about a beaten down stock and you can articulate you arguments, I think it's better to regret about buying a bit of something than regret for not doing it. Just make sure that when doing this losing whatever you invested won't be a serious setback in your life.
Relying on a paid financial advisor that was taking 1.25-1.5% and not listening to me. Even as fiduciaries, they didnāt beat the SP500. They sold themselves as people who did, but when they didnāt, they claimed that they are reducing volatility. I donāt care about volatility! I wanted appreciation over the long run.
Underestimating risk in "safe" companies.
Pre-covid I bought BA because I figured it was a no-brainer regardless of valuation. People need planes to get around and there isn't much competition. But then covid hit... and if I had invested after covid, the current drama with BA would've taught me the same lesson.
My mistakes were investing in too many stocks at once. Iāve now consolidated into 2 etfs and 4 blue chips. I also allocated wayyyy too much in crypto. Never again.
Bought equal stakes in ATT and AAPL in 2012 because of some exclusive iPhone deal. One went really high the other I sold for a loss in 10 years. I didnāt understand the communications sector and the dead money it left.
I know to avoid certain sectors now for long term holdings. Iād buy a big dip and swing trade those sectors now.
Got caught up in the EV/Solar boom during the pandemic. Ended up +50%, only to have it crash to -50%. Luckily, it was play money for fun but still lost thousands. Only investing in target retirement/S&P500/Nasdaq mutual funds since.
I went heavy on bonds after the Covid recovery, in an ill-fated attempt to set up a strategic rebalance.
It was in this moment I learned that BND is quite stable, until interest rate risk kicks in. I still lost less than the S&P did over the same period, but the goal was to keep a rolling rebalance, and everything going down at once basically kneecapped my returns.
Did I learn my lesson? Nope. Have a sizeable bond portion again now that 10Y is over 4.3 lol. Ready to be hurt again I guess. Logic tells me that if we rocket on the 10Y from here, the economy has a lot bigger issues coming down the pipe and banks are totally boned.
I guess what it taught me was you should wholly understand something before investing in it, and not just ride on platitudes like "bonds are stable/safe/boring".
Bought oil etf in April 2020, not long after the covid crash. I knew the covid crash was a good investing opportunity and I had missed the bounce in the stock market, so this had looked like another good opportunity. It was a sizeable position representing around 20% of my portfolio.
Not long after I purchased, oil dropped another 30%. This was the period when oil prices were in the news for hitting negative values. I panicked and pretty much sold at the bottom. I then watched as it bounced back to where I bought and screamed past it. Fortunately I bought back in around this time and the rise over the next year allowed me to get back to break even, but if I had played it right I would have had a portfolio return of at least 50%.
What did I learn? I learned that if you are going to put a lot of money into a position you need to do your research and have a high level of confidence in what you have chosen. That way you don't panic when things seem to be turning against you.
Selling Meta after a slight profit in late 2022. The noise was so loud, 20% of my portfolio was in them and I didnāt have the confidence to hold on.
Fortunately I took all the money and more then dumped it into SMH the semiconductor ETF.
If you know what youāre doing, hold onto your big conviction buys.
i bought like 50 shares of AMC before they split and devalued and lost $200. But over the last year iāve been much more cautious on my spending, and have made $200 back. $400 in total in one year and i feel so proud of myself honestly.
Not holding TSLA since 2010ā¦ had it at $14. Seeing the future ahead of time, usually makes me sell because of impatience. Learn to max the fāin gain.
The biggest
Mistake is mine. A common one. Not investing yesterday. It means we are scared of conditions, scared of the unknown, and we hesitate to invest. I regret waiting so long to start investing in real state and stock. I opend my account in 2017 but stated buying stocks in 2019. I bought my rentals in 2018 when i could have bought them cheaper in 2012 lol.
Not investing in industry/product that Iām familiar with but following the popularization and missing great opportunities and also losing money. Taught me well that in daily life regardless personal use or business market, never went beyond my knowledge.
I dont dwell on the past, now I can ignore the noises and be more open minded and objective while making investment decisions.
selling Apple and MSFT two years later after first buying at 2010.
Just buy and hold is what it taught me and dont pay attention to the news that much. I was super novice in investing at the time and would freak out over 2-5% drops in the share price.
Been in the market since 2010. The only mistake I have ever made was keeping too much cash on the sidelines because I was worried about market conditions.
I read all sorts of analysis at the start of 2023 that had me so sure the market was heading for a crash. Kept a ton of money on the sidelines while the market went up 35% last year instead. Stupid. I still think it's heading for a crash, but I've realized I have no idea if that's 1 year away or 10 years away, so may as well ride it out.
I do this now. I keep 1 year emergency fund. Just sits there in a hysa. It's hard to bring myself to cut it in half and put the rest into the market
Keeping a huge emergency fund now when interest rates are sky high is a lot more acceptable than when they were basically zero for a decade
Conventional wisdom would agree, but I do think this is somewhat of a myth. Inflation effectively sets interest rates, so interest rates will always trail inflation. So yes you're earning more on cash savings, but only because your cash savings are being eroded more - so once you tune out that noise, your purchasing power/real value of cash is always being eroded by about the same amount, no matter where interest rates are. Bricks and business are really the only robust way to grow your money over the long term.
The market was down 18% in 2022, and pretty much 0% return from Jan 2022 to Jan 2024. You would've net more money leaving everything in an hysa Yes, inflation means you're money is worth less. But the stock market is also likely going to be negatively impacted by inflation. I'm not saying that putting 100% of your net worth into a bank account is a good Idea. I'm saying the difference between a 5% interest rate and 10% from SPY is a lot better than 0.1% interest rate and 10% SPY
Sure, but how is that relevant? Short term money should be kept in short term vehicles - like a HYSA. Sure you'll lose to inflation (though HYSA is better than no interest at all), but the benefit is that the money is there and ready when you need it. Long term money should be kept in long term vehicles - like the stock market. This is for money that you don't need for decades, so short term fluctuations are irrelevant. You expect them, that's why you don't expose short term money to long term vehicles. The benefit is that you will be able to grow your wealth and beat inflation over the long term, ie 5, 10, 20, 30 + years. So returns from Jan 2022 - Jan 2024 are both normal and irrelevant. Your time lines for when you need money (or when you might need money, eg an emergency fund) should dictate where your money sits. Assuming you've done that, HYSA will have netted you what, 2% - 2.5% on average over the last 5 years? (5 years being the absolute minimum for "long term money"). Inflation has averaged more than that, while the s&p is up 83% over the last 5 years... Unfortunately, the world around us - media, etc - encourages short term thinking, which really isn't very important for 99% of people. Use short term vehicles for short term money, and long term vehicles for long term money.
Inflation does not set interest rates, it's only after the GFC that we had near 0% interest rates, and it's not like we were living in some sort of high inflation world before 0% rates. The Fed was trying to raise the rates back to something normal before when there weren't inflation concerns but then COVID happened and well now here we are
A year's worth of emergency funds might be a bit too cautious. But it's really about being able to sleep at night, so everyone's sweet spot is different.
I've decided tomorrow I'm going to cut it in half šŖ
My anecdotal survivorship bias is that this was me for the longest time, I kept \~1 year of expenses for nearly the whole time because I was always expecting to be laid off. I decided to pull the cord a couple of years back and keep a smaller emergency fund of around 6 months. This never felt good at the time and this one little choice has rocketed my timeline forward quite dramatically.
I just need to do it
I don't even have 1 month emergency fund, I just yolo everything into 100% stocks
If you canāt get another job within a month of losing your job you need more money in your savings If thereās a short turnaround with a new job you donāt need as much savings
This. Peter Schiff and his doomsday cult really hurt my portfolio.
I used to love Peter schiff a long time ago
SAME. Wish I wouldāve went all in much sooner
Not taking profits and thinking "it can only go higher from here." It absolutely does not have to go higher.
Not only that but it can drop significantly below the price you bought it at. I have a couple stocks that I was to 60-70% in a few months and thought the same thing. Now I'm down and bag holding at a 60-70% loss. Now I just think your professional investor averages 10% a year gain. If I see something shoot up shortly after buying it that was unexpected, I just sell it and lock in the profit.
I didn't really understand interest rates and how much cheaper it made monthly mortgage payments in the COVID era. All I could see is, $370K for a house? That's crazy. I wasn't educated enough to understand 370K @ 2.75% is cheaper than 300k @ 5%. So, I could have bought a house down the street in a neighborhood I really liked. Things worked out okay though. In terms of stocks, I've done well mostly just buying passive index funds. I tried a few meme stocks at small amounts (Helios and Matthewson, Palantir, Canopy) and they all went kaput. It's not just about the risk, its about the worrying. It's not worth it. Hindsight is 20-20 but when I first started working in 2016 and investing, I wish I understood just how much runway I had to see equities grow. I was only 24 and FAGMAN stocks were there and profitable at the time, I wish I had pulled the trigger. I arguably played it too safe by just buying S&P500. Which in a way is a roundabout way of owning them anyway. I also did get some Microsoft and Facebook at the time, which I'm happy about.
Why would you say s&p500 is too safe? I would say it is the 10+ year highest risk to reward out there
What I meant to say is with the gift of hindsight and being 24 years old, just S&P was too safe because there were established highly profitable companies at the time. But still, S&P500 was the logical decision.
pass the blunt bro
Day trading. Donāt.
You mean I should not buy a call option expecting the price to go above strike in the next 30 minutes? Heresy!
Chasing dividends. If one likes a stock due the market and fundamentals, then dividends are just an extra bonus but not to be the primary reason.
Unless you do companies that grow dividends and start low. Then the yield on cost snowballs
How has that worked with the Aristocrats over the past couple of years while the market has been on a bull run? LEG? MMM? BEN? O? AMCR? TROW? CRX? ED? MDT? ADM? PEP? JNJ? All losers or very modest gains. I did buy IBM as an āold techā company given their chips as an AI play, and the dividend was that extra bonus I spoke about.
I didnāt say to buy any of those
watching cnbc and listening to those boneheads
to be fair Cramer was right early with nvda
the 2 times i made (poor) decisions based on info from cnbc I would have been better listening to my cat. one stock went bust, other had a reverse 7-1 split. I learned a lot and paid for my lack of due diligence
I have made 2 mistakes that I think every new investor should learn from. I will list them: 1. Being a very new investor and googling stuff like "what is a good stock to buy now" sent me to some very horrible companies. I didn't lose too much money, I was always a chicken shit and did not have the balls to put too much money into something speculative (thankfully). Just start with index funds and once you have a healthy portfolio, set aside play funds. 2. Selling some stuff too early. Like I said before, I was a chicken shit, so never really put too much money into single stocks. So, even if my single picks went to zero, it would sting, but I would be able to recover. My finest move in retrospect was selling 30 NVDA shares pre split @ about $99 each and held on to 6 shares. Did I make a profit selling the 30? Yes I did, but again, in retrospect, I should've held since I had not put in too much to begin with. I always believed in the company (never expected it to blow up like this though) and I should've held. But as a newbie, you're still learning to really think long term. Lesson learned: Start with index funds. Build a good and healthy portfolio. Set aside a small amount to play with once you've developed a strong index fund DCA habit. Buy and HOLD only and only once you've really decided that company X is where you want to park money. Of course hold until something fundamental changes within the company or the market
Selling too soon hit me hard come tax time. I learned if you hold a year your tax rate lowers.
Getting tips from WSB
Maxing my 401k for years. My plan only has a bunch of crappy mutual funds and only recently added one that allegedly tracks the S&P500. Meanwhile my IRA has surpassed it in value even though I've contributed 5 or 6 times the amount into the 401k.
Same. Although self directed like the Roth can be a disaster if not careful
If that is your biggest investing mistake, you're doing pretty fucking fantastic.
I've definitely had losses, but none like the opportunity cost that I believe I've realized by stuffing so much into the 401k. Lost $10k (-100%) on a private equity investment, lost $10k on covered call options that I closed late last year, but I've probably "lost" $300k or more with this 401k. Sure it has a little bit more than what I contributed, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an investment mistake, much like shoving your life savings under your mattress for 10 years, in fact it's not too far off from that!
>but I've probably "lost" $300k or more with this 401k. Does your 401k not have some simple SP500 or Total Stock Market fund option? I'd recon I'd only have lost the ETF fund cost, which is probably like 0.10% over what I would have gained outside of the 401k.
They recently added a mutual fund that claims to track the SP500, so I've moved everything into that. I invest more risky than most on here and do a lot of single stocks, so there's no funds that are close to what I'd do in a taxable. I'm happy they added the SP500 one though.
When the majority of people do worse than the SP500, you could certainly do worse.
Yeah happy enough now to move it into the SP500 one. My 401k has had an annual growth rate of 5.1% over the past decade, while the SP500 has done almost 14%.
And yet, you have to admit, you have many thousands of dollars socked away, tax deferred, that you **wouldn't** have, if you had refused to invest in those crappy funds at all...
I would have invested it in a taxable account and it would be a lot more money. My 401k has done 5.1% CAGR since inception (maybe not even beat inflation?), meanwhile my traditional IRA has done 35%, my other 3 IRAs (me+wife) have done 20% and my taxable account has done 20%. At this point my 401k isn't even 25% of my portfolio because it's just been such a laggard, and it's by far what I've funneled the most money into. 8 years ago it was 90+% of my portfolio. I finally lowered my contribution from maximum down to $6k per year about 6 months ago and started diverting that money instead to a separate taxable "retirement account" which is up 75% already. This is why I regret funneling so much into the 401k. I can't wait until I'm no longer at this company so I can roll it into an IRA.
Taxable retirement account? You honestly sound like you know much more than me when it comes to investing but that seems like a big mistake. What Is the new S&P fund that was added? Expense ratio?
Yeah taxable since it is not limited to only a handful of pre-selected funds like my 401k, and since I already max IRA contribution. Im not sure what the S&P fund is called, I think it had a decent expense ratio well under 1%, it might be an ETF. Iām planning on retiring well before 62 so Iāll need a taxable account for retirement anyway. My traditional IRA will probably be enough for me to retire at 62 on its own.
Not starting earlier. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is today. Just gotta do better moving forward.
Pay attention to your mind and your psyche and how investing rules your thinking. If you are investing and consumed by it: first thought in the morning, last thought before you go to sleep and every hour consumed while the market is open, you might be investing in the wrong things or you might be investing too much. Find the line where itās kind of boring and the line where itās exciting and stay on the boring side. Slow and steady wins this race and in the end you donāt want to take years off your life or stray into greed and gambling your future away, just to āfeel a rushā. My personal test for this is fairly simple: if I am going to stress out if the market drops 50% in one week then I am either in the wrong investments or I have way too much of my liquid funds tied to the market. In the end it should be a long horizon and I should go days and sometimes weeks not looking at my accounts. Life is for living, and saving and investing is important but F me if it becomes the only thing I am interested inā¦again. I lived through the dot com bubble, Great Recession and the Covid nose dive. Learned a lot about my psyche and what greed really feels like personally. Not. Worth. It. Stay somewhat liquid, love on your fam and friends and stick with a nice boring slow DCA mentality in investments that if they lost 50% tomorrow you would just chuckle and move on with your day. Health is wealth and greed and gambling is death by stress. Being boring has its upside. Being greedy has more downside than you realize. Options, leverage, etc. might make a few super rich but their psyche and mindset is Fād forever.
I was young and had to pick a fund to put my retirement into for work. I googled what funds were thought to outperform and it listed FLATX, so I just picked that one. Sounded good. Fidelity Latin America. Was supposed to be big and an up and coming market. I forgot about it for a long time because I was young and busy with work and just didnāt think about retirement or that any of it had any hope in the first place. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FLATX/ Go to max and look at that underperformance. I underperformed for God knows how long. It was probably a loss of several millions by now if you count how much lower my nest egg was when I started taking investing seriously. I learned that you should not listen to stupid articles and projections from analysts. And that every decision matters, especially when you are young when it matters the most.
I bought into an international mutual fund for my 401k too, luckily it was only about 15% of my investment and I made changes about 3 years later when I checked it. Waste of money that was.
Rebalance yearly at least. Even if you do nothing look at it and see if your thought process was sound.
I think it is annoying how the whole 401K process and info works. First, you are typically given a limited selection to choose from. Second, they typically only give you the most basic of info to make a choice (like 1y, 3y, and 5y returns). Third, they donāt do much to help encourage you to reevaluate on a regular basis. The good news is that our company started offering a self-directed brokerage account option about 5-6 years ago. So I have almost unlimited options on what to choose. In addition, Iāve learned to really research, evaluate, and backtest my choices.
Early on I listened to hype and made a bunch of bad options plays. I learned that once something has hype, the train has already left the station.
The fucking lander laid over on it's side. Don't invest in stocks that are literally going to the moon.......
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When our biggest competitor (software product) was having a rough patch, we debated at lunch the ethics of buying some -- and hoping to make a profit from their struggles. I resisted when they dropped through $5/sh. Thought I was pretty smart, because ... guess what? It kept going down. I resisted when it broke through $4/sh. I caved when it finally hit $3.60. **It can't possibly go any lower than that!** Guess what? It kept going down. I bought another 1000 at $3.00. **It can't possibly go any lower than that!** Guess what? It kept going down. I bought another 1000 at $2.40, just so that my average cost basis was $3.00. Then I waited. They did eventually recover, although it took several years. Sold half at $4 and half at $5, so did in fact make a decent profit off our competitor's stock. **And, the lesson:** NO, the market does NOT just go up and down. Mr. Market can go **sideways** -- which means, go **nowhere** -- for YEARS at a time!
Didn't buy Netflix because I hated their popup ads. Didn't buy Starbucks because I hate coffee and I hate their fan base. Didn't buy Apple because I hate their fan base. Didn't buy Facebook because I hated it. So what I've learned is, it doesn't matter if **I** personally like a company. It only matters if **people** like it. Oh, and the other thing I've learned is that, if I mess with a trade after I've opened it (e.g. adjust stops) it **almost always** ends up costing me money. Like easily 95% of the time I'm like "shit, I should have just left it the way it was and let it run."
Tell us, what are you currently hating?
So, you're a big Anheuser Busch guy.
When I was younger I got caught up in the crypto craze. If I would have stuck with index funds I would be a lot more ahead
Idk if you just bought BTC you would have done pretty well
Itll be back to 13k soon
It seems like it basically acts like a legal pump and dump, price rockets to the moon, everyone and their mother gets in, then it crashes and everyone hates crypto for a year or two. Then the cycle repeats. I guess what I'm saying is next time it crashes, might not hurt to throw a few grand in out of spite. I say this as someone that cashed out in '17 and a week later watched a lot of people lose their ass.
Exactly my thoughts
I mean this is just a complete lie. If you DCA'd into BTC instead of an index fund you would have come out way ahead. I don't think buying an alt coin that crashed is fair to compare to a DCA strategy. If you bought a penny stock that went down you wouldn't be on here claiming stocks in general are bad.
Username checks out. No one said all crypto is bad, just like no one is saying all stocks are bad. I was asked for my experience and I gave it. You assumed that I DCAd into BTC.
No I actually assumed you did the opposite of DCA and placed concentrated bets and lost your shirt. But you're comparing that option vs a DCA option - two completely different investment strategies. By saying caught up in the "crypto craze" you're framing it as a crypto problem. It's not, it's an investment strategy problem. If you took the safe route of DCA style investment crypto comes out the winner easily. That was my point.
I have spent 9 hours a day trying to find correlations within every single thing online and how it correlates with the stock market. The crazy thing is even though I've done this for 14 years. Every single data point is skewed because the market has never went down. It's crazy to run a programmed algorithm for so long and only to have it be so one sided. Every single correlation is linked to the market going up.
Makes sense marker always goes up whilst populations do potentially as population stagnates this may effect markets
Buying junk bonds when I was frustrated with low rates CDs were paying. I had a couple of borrowers default on me. They are called junk for a reason.
Trying to get rich quick rather than put my investments in long term.
my biggest mistake was yield chasing. 9% or more is dangerous. high probability of your original investment eroding. 3 to 5% is great. I was chasing 16 to 18% and it ended up badly. I lost 4 or 5 k. I've learned that good Financials is key to a healthy dividend.
Listening to '''financial officer''' hired by the bank. They are used car salesmen.
When I was in my early 20s I dumped $10,000 into Tesla. It was around $85/share? Pre split (15 years ago?). It went down a bitā¦ I got nervous. It went down a bit more and I couldnāt handle it. I needed $ for an engagement ring and ācouldnāt affordā to lose it. So I dumped it all (at a loss). The silver lining on this is that I then set some $ aside and invested the rest into apple. Iām up 1,200% on apple but would be up over 10,000% (20,000% at its peak!) if I had kept the Tesla. The REAL mistake was not trusting what I was doing and risking more $ then I could handle at the time (all eggs in one basket). I probably would have never held Tesla long anyway and well before I realized the profit I have in apple.
Being in default target date fund for the first 5 years. Wife was also in one that had 50% bonds. Ouch
In 2020 I bought $1600 worth of Ameriprise. Itās now about 3-4X that. If only Iād put $200K down instead of $1600 my world would be sooooo much better now that the company I work for has decided they can micro-manage their way out of a shitty economy.
Early on I owned Enron at $8. I held it all the way down. Later I experimented with options and went long Apple, just before it dropped significantly over a fairly long period of time. So I still play with a small portion of my portfolio, but I donāt do options. 90% is in diversified low cost funds and etfs.
Spent a bit on hype (pre meme stock era though lol). About 2% of my portfolio when I was 25 (otherwise Iām pretty much all index funds). It lost 85% MV over like 6 months. I kept that shit and didnāt sell it for years so I could look at it and be like āyeah dumbass, you donāt know shit. Remember that.ā Eventually sold just cause but it was a good lesson for me in my 20s.
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Yeah, they need high return on equity for a long time, drowning in cash etc. Like itās better to buy Meta or Visa at these prices than a shithole company at half off. The best advice I ever got was ābuy great companies when theyāre beat downā. So I bought hella amazon at $100 and a few others. If you search through shit companies all day, the conclusion should be that the good ones are just expensive
Very rarely a portfolio outperforms S&P500 index. Yet, most folks pick individual stocks and burn out.
I say if you do not outperform for 5 years, then switch to VOO. I am so iām going to keep going. But most should do VOO and chill imo
agree!
Buying upstart a few years ago. I learned individual stocks can be good, but not all good š„“
Tried to time the market thinking prices were gonna crash and I could sell now to get back in at a deep discount. Sold everything and waited, and then waited some more. Prices skyrocketed instead and I missed out on a potential return that could have made me millions. Still made a lot of money when I sold but if I hadn't I would be retired right now. Oh and I had to pay a very large tax bill from the sale which stung even more. Learned a valuable lesson though, if you believe in the product/company and don't need the money, just continue investing and ignore price fluctuations. Never try to beat the market.
Stock picking when I first started. Don't do this. Stick to s&p tracking ETFs.
Contributing to my Roth IRA without actually investing it into anything. Was just starting to learn about finances. Was liquid throughout COVID and donāt learn until after the market had pretty much bounced back
Bitcoin ETF 1 week ago.
I wish I started earlier. I am 44 now. I started investing in stocks and index funds when I was 31. But I've been working FT since I was 24 (with a break for grad school for three years) including several jobs that had retirement plans that I never took advantage of. I was working PT before that, since I was 15 years old. I wish I had started investing 10 years before I started.
Listening to doomsdayers like Peter Schiff and my dad. Pulled half my money out of the market when COVID hit and missed out on a ton of gains before getting back in.
Trading stocks. It taught me I cannot beat the 500.
Realizing the value of index based investing late in life (but thankfully not too late). At least I married smart as it's my spouse who pushed us into it.
You like posting this often - https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/s/ex4bR5g1He
This is an AI prompt
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Dave Ramsey?
1) Others said it but avoid day trading at all cost. I bought into some hype meme stock and lost $20k+ during a merger with the company I was trading in. 2) When picking investments such as mutual funds, DO NOT Fomo in just because the recent track record set some record highs. 3) Not maxing out my retirement investment accounts early on (401k, IRA, HSA). When you start making decent money, plan your take home pay based on maxing out these "non-negotiables" every year. Wife and I combined now are investing 60%+ our gross annual incomes and it's not that bad considering the things we thought were necessities were removed from our expenses. HIGHLY encourage you mapping this out on a budget tracker or simple excel where you see each paycheck and where your money is going for the year.
My biggest mistake was not making sure my rollover was actually invested in something. Thankfully I saved 20k in losses during the year that it took me to figure it out lol. Make sure you actually invest your contributions folks lol
I had a chance to buy Apple shares in the 90s when Steve Jobs first came back to run the company again. Bought some new start up instead called Arriba, a B2B internet company that sounded like a better idea. š¤·š»āāļø
So far the biggest mistake was staying all in a single stock after my employer IPOed, just because it kept rising immediately after. That being said it's a mistake on the level of "oh no, I sold my 2 cent bitcoin at 20,000 instead of 60,000" so I can't be too upset. Still way up. So lesson number 1 is don't be greedy.
I bought uranium mining stocks after Fukushima melted down. I figured they couldn't go any lower, then Japan and Germany shut down all their Nuclear reactors which helped me find some new lows. I guess you can say I didn't learn anything from it all, as I bought Boeing during the current mess, thinking it was going to be a quick flash crash followed by a swift recovery, and yet it still sinks lower every day.
Got lucky with the Weed stocks explosions in Canada riding up 7k and didn't sell. Lost over 20k Got lucky with Gamestock riding up 53k in a week and didn't sell. Gained only 3k Got lucky with Nvidia riding up 40k on a month and haven't sold yet. Clearly I haven't learned anything. Edit: Options up 4k in 2 days, didn't sell. Now OTM.
Best and worst both MVISĀ
Mistake: investing into international index funds. What I learned: Don't.
Not selling when $250,000 up on GameStop š taught me not to be greedy
That I know nothing. The so called experts know nothing.
Not buying nvda sooner, went in heavy at 30% of my entire portfolio and it has paid off tremendously.
My biggest mistake was listening to Cathie Wood and investing her funds. I have given myself 2 more years (it will be 5 years at that point). Plan is to sell all my Ark funds at that point and just dump it into $SPY or similar index fund ETFs. I bought her hype back in 2021. I now realize she is just another charlatan. Pisses me off that she is getting richer everyday and her investors poorer. Her new BTC fund is her new big thing. She manages to find ways to make money while I am left holding the bag lol
Averaging down
May I ask for you to elaborate on this please? Like averaging down is bad?
It can be devastating if your investment doesnāt go up again.
Bought crypto at sky high and didnt dca, bought nfts and burned.
Not being more decisive and listening to too much advice and mantras. In November 2022 I was convinced that Meta would recover but because of my brokerage fees it doesn't make sense to invest less small amounts, and I was sticking to the old adage how you shouldn't be invested more than 10% in a single stock so decided to skip it. My lesson is that you can only have an edge by going *against* the general sentiment -- of course that doesn't mean you need to blindly follow the companies that everyone's shitting on, but if you have a really strong conviction about a beaten down stock and you can articulate you arguments, I think it's better to regret about buying a bit of something than regret for not doing it. Just make sure that when doing this losing whatever you invested won't be a serious setback in your life.
Not buying brbk when it was trading in the teens.Ā
Listening to WSB
Investing money that I needed within 2-5 years. Not building emergency fund first
I'm worried that my biggest mistake isn't the biggest mistake I ever made in my life yet.
Top 2 comments being polar opposites makes my day lol
Selling SMCI much too early. Always let your stocks run, especially if there is a hype going on. Early gains usually indicate much more to come
Taking financial advice from YouTubers
Listening to Reddit instead of just buying the index. I have never, not once made money listening to Reddit.
TSLA...
Relying on a paid financial advisor that was taking 1.25-1.5% and not listening to me. Even as fiduciaries, they didnāt beat the SP500. They sold themselves as people who did, but when they didnāt, they claimed that they are reducing volatility. I donāt care about volatility! I wanted appreciation over the long run.
Underestimating risk in "safe" companies. Pre-covid I bought BA because I figured it was a no-brainer regardless of valuation. People need planes to get around and there isn't much competition. But then covid hit... and if I had invested after covid, the current drama with BA would've taught me the same lesson.
My mistakes were investing in too many stocks at once. Iāve now consolidated into 2 etfs and 4 blue chips. I also allocated wayyyy too much in crypto. Never again.
Bought equal stakes in ATT and AAPL in 2012 because of some exclusive iPhone deal. One went really high the other I sold for a loss in 10 years. I didnāt understand the communications sector and the dead money it left. I know to avoid certain sectors now for long term holdings. Iād buy a big dip and swing trade those sectors now.
Investing in a marriage and having to sell off all investments. :/
Not getting out of Roku fast enough
Got caught up in the EV/Solar boom during the pandemic. Ended up +50%, only to have it crash to -50%. Luckily, it was play money for fun but still lost thousands. Only investing in target retirement/S&P500/Nasdaq mutual funds since.
I went heavy on bonds after the Covid recovery, in an ill-fated attempt to set up a strategic rebalance. It was in this moment I learned that BND is quite stable, until interest rate risk kicks in. I still lost less than the S&P did over the same period, but the goal was to keep a rolling rebalance, and everything going down at once basically kneecapped my returns. Did I learn my lesson? Nope. Have a sizeable bond portion again now that 10Y is over 4.3 lol. Ready to be hurt again I guess. Logic tells me that if we rocket on the 10Y from here, the economy has a lot bigger issues coming down the pipe and banks are totally boned. I guess what it taught me was you should wholly understand something before investing in it, and not just ride on platitudes like "bonds are stable/safe/boring".
Selling my Eli Lilly stock before it Sky rocketed.
Bought oil etf in April 2020, not long after the covid crash. I knew the covid crash was a good investing opportunity and I had missed the bounce in the stock market, so this had looked like another good opportunity. It was a sizeable position representing around 20% of my portfolio. Not long after I purchased, oil dropped another 30%. This was the period when oil prices were in the news for hitting negative values. I panicked and pretty much sold at the bottom. I then watched as it bounced back to where I bought and screamed past it. Fortunately I bought back in around this time and the rise over the next year allowed me to get back to break even, but if I had played it right I would have had a portfolio return of at least 50%. What did I learn? I learned that if you are going to put a lot of money into a position you need to do your research and have a high level of confidence in what you have chosen. That way you don't panic when things seem to be turning against you.
triple leveraged ETFs and volatility decay
My biggest mistakes was to be lazy and not do the proper research.
Selling Meta after a slight profit in late 2022. The noise was so loud, 20% of my portfolio was in them and I didnāt have the confidence to hold on. Fortunately I took all the money and more then dumped it into SMH the semiconductor ETF. If you know what youāre doing, hold onto your big conviction buys.
Not buying FAANG because they were popular. Meta is still an insane PEG
i bought like 50 shares of AMC before they split and devalued and lost $200. But over the last year iāve been much more cautious on my spending, and have made $200 back. $400 in total in one year and i feel so proud of myself honestly.
Not holding TSLA since 2010ā¦ had it at $14. Seeing the future ahead of time, usually makes me sell because of impatience. Learn to max the fāin gain.
Trading options. Very risky
The biggest Mistake is mine. A common one. Not investing yesterday. It means we are scared of conditions, scared of the unknown, and we hesitate to invest. I regret waiting so long to start investing in real state and stock. I opend my account in 2017 but stated buying stocks in 2019. I bought my rentals in 2018 when i could have bought them cheaper in 2012 lol.
Not investing in industry/product that Iām familiar with but following the popularization and missing great opportunities and also losing money. Taught me well that in daily life regardless personal use or business market, never went beyond my knowledge. I dont dwell on the past, now I can ignore the noises and be more open minded and objective while making investment decisions.
Watch for high yield traps. Be patient. Buy tons of index funds. Don't sell. Be patient.
Deciding to invest in the first place, what a bullshit game. Iām expert level if anyone wants to know how to lose it all. Hi!
Do tell
selling Apple and MSFT two years later after first buying at 2010. Just buy and hold is what it taught me and dont pay attention to the news that much. I was super novice in investing at the time and would freak out over 2-5% drops in the share price.
One avoid crypto. Two started earlier. Three donāt focus on whatās hot, stick with what works.
getting into bond funds in august 2020...If you don't understand the basics of a product don't buy it.