A low cost ETF should be the foundation of you have a low threshold for risk
I’m regretting that my number of holdings is getting to large
Means that I get bored with it. As I’m holiday this week ill try and shrink the number down.
Same boat. Faffed around with individual stocks in the UK, and learned a thing or two which has value. I’ve ended up putting a third of my holdings into ETFs, holding LT another 1/3 on FTSE stocks, 10% on AIM and the remainder on renewables which have a yield of 7-8% in the main.
This way I’ll be watching daily movements a lot less and just sticking a more mundane monthly investment.
Happy double white chocolate cheesecake day
The world has become too complicated for average humans to be able to hedge against multiple correlated risks in an ever changing environment, with thousands of companies being created and only a few succeeding long term. Also, technology is getting bigger, and help to achieve better productivity overall.
So I feel confident about passive index investing Bogle style, and see no reason lo lose my time cherry picking companies. I respect that as a hobby, though.
Said that, if you are consistent following macro, interest rates, money supply and so on and find the right smart people to follow (at the right timing, as smart people can be quite wrong sometimes), you can find some great opportunity every 5 years or so and risk on that say 10% of your assets there. It can be anything: bonds, a sector, a specific stock. IMHO is not worth cherry picking 10 stocks every year. Becomes either too much work or just random luck. Talking always about the average human.
I have been investing within a stocks and shares ISA from early 2020, the COVID crash made me want to buy shares!! So I guess I have the right mentality that I want to buy low. However over the many years I have learnt that there is no free lunch, EVRAZ and Polymetal spring to mind (got out of poly with a small profit TF). I am slowly whittling down my TRY holding into a global tracker, fortunately I stayed invested and got a decent return from the October 23 lows, and now the fear comes in the shape of not wanting to lose it all again should we see inflation spike or some other negative catalyst. By sticking to a global tracker, you can wave goodbye to all that stress knowing that when it goes down, everything else is damn near following it down probably doubly as bad! It will soon spring back up again soon enough. Life is too short to fixate over individual shares and I class investment trusts in that category with their gearing, discounts and management risk. Global etf all the way for me, just my opinion of around 4 years investing.
Yep. If I could restart my journey. I would generally stay away from individual stocks. I’ve won on some re 350% up on rolls Royce. But lost on more than I’ve one. Some have been complete disasters e.g. arrival and Fisker. Whereas my managed isa with nutmeg is slowly ticking away nicely. I’d possibly would have combined a small number of diversed dividend stock for a potential regular income
My biggest regret is not buying Carvana shares when it was at £3 in December 2022. Now it’s at £190! I bought a £50k Porsche Taycan which bought me joy but down to £35k value today. If I had bought 17,000 shares in Dec 2022, it would be valued at £3,230,000 today.
A stock trader on twitter gave me a tip off about Carvana stock price exponentially rising but I bought 1 share earlier this year for £63 and sold it the next day because I feared it would go down. I hate myself
I did similiar with nvidia. Sold for about £80 profit, it went up by another £500plus quid before the split. I had a stock that was 30% up a few weeks ago but didn’t want to miss out on more. Now it back to original value. Struggle to sell once I have seen it worth more. Gradually learning and looking to invest for longer term. The daily changes do not affect me as much anymore, I think that’s progress
I sold my NVDA too early as well. I did make a decent profit, but it could have ben a 5 figure profit if I’d held on
I dont regret it so far, though I have made some stupid mistakes such as small holding in MADE, bought some FRC to jump on the hype train as well as another doozy, such as investing in THG, for which I’m currently down 22% and have been red for majority of my holdings. I have also sold shares too early before a real run up, Apple, AMD and Google.
It has taught me more about keeping my emotions in check, and being more in control over the buy/sell button when the markets move. For example, I’m holding onto a stock (RKLB) which I’ve held on for over 3 years now, and mostly in the red. However, I believe in the company, industry and the leadership and have DCA’d down ever since. I’m now holding onto 1800 shares and im up over 300% now. I am now more patient and a lot more selective about stocks I want to invest in.
Since investing (2021), my Money Weighted Rate of Return on my ISA is 141% up and on my GIA, albeit a smaller account which I use for trading, is up a mind boggling over 300% in the past year. For some reason it’s showing 1073% up when I select the Max view but I believe this might be an error.