The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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It's me again the guy who posted here three weeks ago about investing his small and modest trust fund into the stock market. Yup.
https://www.themotte.org/post/1695/friday-fun-thread-for-february-21/300977?context=8#context
I bought at the literal peak and feel like shit.
I'm angry at Donald Trump, myself, but most of all at the market for not pricing in Trump's clearly telegraphed idiotic decisions.
I picked the absolute worst date to start investing in the last three years and am experiencing no small amount of self-pity. Others at least get to have a few months of being in the green. I had one fucking day.
I put 16,000€ into the S&P 500, 500€ into Nvidia, 1,500€ into tech ETFs, and 500€—I shit you not—into an S&P 500 10x leveraged option trade I did for entertainment. Lost it all, of course.
Overall, I'm down 2000€ (~15%) right now.
I have no income stream to buy the dip with, as I'm still a student. I never had more than 2000€ in my bank account before this. I wanted to be really dilligent about not spending this money.
Woe is me. I know the market will recover, this is just a blip on my journey, all that bullshit. Still, it feels awful knowing I could have just waited one week. All that time researching Bogleheads stuff, and now I'm left wondering if I got in right at the end of the gravy train.
I still believe in my reasons for investing (I'm convinced AI will lead to an extra 1 percentage point of growth year over year).
But goddamn. My whole family was against me doing this (the money was in gold before), and ah man, it's all so fucking unfair.
(Yes, I'm a whiny upper-middle-class student who doesn't have a job, but hey, hedonic adaptation and all that. My problems are just as real as those of you who are less tall and handsome.)
Two thoughts. One, every time you invest you should always (always!) have at least a rough timeline in mind. If your timeline is >3 years, great! You're still, historically speaking, probably going to be fine. If it was less, this is a valuable life lesson about stock volatility many have not learned and you might gain some lifelong net-benefit, even literally. Carefully evaluate your timeline and beware of panic selling depending on said timeline.
Two, sometimes it is emotionally easier to "structure" investments (and their sale as well). Although in theory, it is best to invest it all at once and sell it all at once, as soon and as late as possible respectively - this is due to the tendency of the market to go up - in practice as you have learned it can be difficult and full of self-doubt or recrimination. "Structuring" in this context means that you stagger any and all entries and exits into the stock market, effectively 'averaging' the price points. This means, maybe you have 30k to invest, you put in 10k one month, wait a month, 10k the next, wait a month, 10k the next, or something like that. This way, you can at least emotionally free yourself from trying to "time" the market, since the timing effects are diluted (they don't go away entirely, but it's a lot easier to stay convinced that your entry or exit was deliberate and rational). This also means your gains are averaged too, might be good or bad. Like I said, I personally consider it an emotional-management technique, but emotions are a valid and real factor in investing. You can always park the to-be-invested money in a high yield savings account temporarily while you wait.
My timeline is 7 years. I specifically did lump sum investing because it's clearly the best. I trust myself not to sell, which I was right on. I underestimated the emotional pain of it, though, I guess structured investing would have helped against that.
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