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Too many things to buy, but not enough bullets

As someone who held massive cash (in proportion to my networth) previously, it feels scary to see that I'm running out of cash.

For context, just 1 year ago back in Aug 2020, I talked about having $300k CASH before reaching 30 and the breakdown is here.

Few days after I posted, I came upon Tiger Brokers (see my guide and referral here) and have invested heavily since. I grew my Tiger Brokers portfolio from $0 to $28k (one month later) to $70k (five months later) to $95k (eight months later) to $136k (eleven months later) to $170k now (1 year 3 mths later).

And unfortunately, I am sitting on paper losses amounting to close to $9,000 now 🙃as a bulk of my portfolio is in HK/China stocks 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃I'm the donkey.

I've depleted more than half of my CASH warchest just on stocks alone.

I also started my crypto journey in Feb this year. From $0 to close to $30k capital pumped. Though the good news is I'm seeing gains of around 20-30%. Not an amazing feat compared to people who doubled, tripled their moolahs but better than my stocks portfolio

Just by simple maths, it seems like I've pumped around $210k cash across 1 year plus. LOL I joked to my fam that I could by a 3-room HDB in non-mature estate. Worse is, at this point, I can't tell if I was better off investing or keeping my money untouched in the banks 😂

Beyond the cash pumped out for investment, I still have to ensure I've enough money for my liabilities - mortgage loans, credit card bills, household bills etc. 

It feels weird to see my cash cushion deflating more and more as I've trying to "buy the dip" at every occasion or even buy without dips seeing that things seem rosier; only to see that some "dips" seem to be forever black holes! 🙏

At this stage, I feel like I'm eagerly waiting for payday just so I have more guts to invest more and have the mental peace that I have $ that I do not touch for emergency. 

I tried cashing out from a few stocks to channel the funds to others (at times making slight losses), but felt stupid over those decisions because after I sold - prices went up. I could have held on to solid stocks that continues growing OR sell some with some profit. 

I also don't bear to cut losses on stocks that have plummeted 60-70% thinking that I am ok to hold it long-term. 

I've also averaged up on growth stocks, only to see them coming back down and thinking I should have waited longer before I enter.

Whether these are the right decisions, only time will tell. 

There are quite a few interesting and conflicting thoughts I had over the past year investing. While I'm  not seeing good gains/good enough for me to retire, I think this volatile period has been a good experience. Everyone who has invested will definitely see gains and losses. Nobody is godly enough to predict what's going to happen. 

I just need to continue my discipline in saving more/spending little; have more patience; learn more; and have faith and trust that things will be better.

I guess as long as I'm not using leverage, and as long as I remain employed, I should be able to stomach these. 


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Comments

  1. mysecretinvestmentNovember 27, 2021 at 1:33 PM

    Hi, just wanted to let you know what you are experiencing now is par for the course as an investor.

    All investment come with risk and the markets go up and down.

    As you gain more experience and courage that commensurate with higher pay / savings, and you invest more, you should expect bigger gyration in your invested wealth. I like the phrase used by CW8888, the blogger who retired in 2016 : "Invested wealth is an illusion!"

    What this means is that one day your investment may be worth $1M, the next day, the markets plunge and your investment is worth only $500,000. So you want to be an investor, you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared.

    I have encountered 6 market bears so far in my investment journey. Each time the bear came, Mr Market would "borrow" money from my investment (paper loss) anything from $50,000 to well over $160,000 during the Covid bear in Mar 2020. No matter how many bears one encountered before, one would feel the "pain" again when you see your invested wealth get decimated.

    You need to have a sound and substantial cushion in savings to weather the ups and downs of the markets. For me, I have built up a strong CPF savings foundation that would allow me to sleep soundly come bears or bulls.

    Good luck.


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CherryNovember 27, 2021 at 9:45 PM

      Hi there, thank you so much for your sharing and encouragement! And thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. I really appreciate it!

      Delete

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