Investing is nothing like what I thought it would be when I first learned about it. Initially, I thought all it is was to help me grow my capital over time but it quickly evolved into a bunch of undesirable emotions such as fear, anxiety, and greed. At that point, I kind of regret ever investing in the first place yet somehow my interest in learning more about it kept me going. The one thing that hardly matters in my journey was the gains that I made. As far as I could remember, every dip was more memorable so no doubt I have made considerable progress in my investments, I could never have lasted that long if I would have bought into the common beliefs shared in social media. In today’s post, I want to share about my journey and how it has changed me over the years.
It is way different when you have skin in the game
All these talks about buying this stock and earning that yield are seriously useless information. Until I put real cash into my first investment, I have never felt that much anxiety and excitement in my life. In fact, I would never have admitted that losing a few hundred dollars in paper loss could feel that pain as a young individual. Before investing, I thought I could look past it rather quickly knowing that investing is risky and that the price of stocks naturally fluctuates over time. Looking back, I feel that my fear led to being more cautious when investing and that helped a lot when I started managing large sums of money. Thus, my first biggest lesson was to never underestimate the impact of investing and more importantly, to accustom to making paper losses as a result of market corrections.
Staying objective is not easy when investing
I have mentioned this on multiple occasions but it is one of the greatest lessons any investors could learn. When things go south and the companies you are vested in are struck with waves of bad news, no strategy would help to keep you sane. At some point when you have already burned a hole in your portfolio through averaging down on your positions, it will feel like all hope is lost. Though the extreme feelings might be temporal, the fear of making permanent losses will linger for an extended period of time. Sharing this exposes the reality about investing as the dark side of investing is often hidden from new players in the market. Hence, my second lesson that I would like to mention is that investing has made me a more objective person even in a state of total panic. That is, to see things as they are and acting based on the situation at hand.
How to spot talents amongst “nice people”
Before I started investing, I felt that there were only 2 main types of people in this world, they are nice people or mean people. Boy was I wrong about that. Throughout my journey as an investor, I realized that money management and perspectives about “investing” can reveal one’s true nature about how one cares about others in real life. Say, for example, if all an investor cares about is capital gain and yields, then that person is probably very selfish and short-sighted in reality. Otherwise, I have also spotted human reactions towards corporate actions which are filled with hypocrisy. For example, company A paid a huge amount of its earnings to its staff instead of paying more dividends to investors. If any investor felt that that move was wrong, then that person is probably too blinded by self-interest because if he or she was the employee of that company, would he or she had rejected that bonus payment? All in all, investing put me in many unique positions to learn more about different personalities and characters of people.
Closing Thoughts
I am certain that every investor goes through his or her own journey and learns from their decisions and actions over time. Personally, despite all the negative experiences it is still a beneficial one for me. After all, money will start to lose its meaning and impact once we have accumulated a certain amount of it. Therefore, perhaps these lessons that we go through as investors are the most valuable to us.
