The Amateur Investor Ep.13: In a little deep
When one gets older, one picks up a healthy amount of skepticism.
Maybe it’s the loss of innocence.
Maybe it’s the realisation that this is really it and that you have to start adulting now if you’re planning to survive.
In any case, to put it bluntly, the shine starts to wear off in some places.
At least it did in my case. But for some reason this had yet to sink in properly for investing.
When COVID-19 was just starting to kick in, Hsuan was giving me a crash course in stock investing, kinda like a much more contrarian Mr Miyagi. By the time I had more or less what I needed to know, COVID was well and truly in full swing and I began to get into the market, eager to get some hands on experience.
Up until this now, I’d done pretty well. All three of my sales had come out ahead, the highest being half of my position with WZR which basically doubled my money. I’d made a few more purchases on the way and then about three days ago I stopped short and had a look at my portfolio. Up until quite recently, I’d maintained a pretty strict rule to make sure I kept a comfortable amount of cash liquid, about 40% as an insurance policy in case things went pear-shaped in a big way. Roughly two days ago I realised I had gone over that threshold by about 5% over that. I’d been sucked in on a number of opportunities to double down on some positions, some had been capital raisings, others had just been dips in the stock price below the original buy-in. In any case, I’d become complacent and let my FOMO sneak up on me a little too fast.
The day I found out, I tried my best not to panic. I’d seen those positions make gains before, they would make gains again soon. The only time I had to panic, I told myself was if I let my emotions take over and decided to panic sell. So for now, I’m setting up some alerts and doing a full review of what of my positions I’d like to move out of to equalize my holdings a little.
I’m hoping I manage to trim my positions and make it out as unscathed as possible.
Who knows, maybe make some profit.
I’ll update you guys next week on how it all goes.
For now though,
Go slow, play small, learn the process
