Your worst rookie error?

[rod]

My biggest mistakes were in the pre-Freetrade years (below, from when we discussed mistakes a year ago). I learned a lot from them. Current errors: Stitchfix -6 and had been +100% but I held on to it, and Baidu -45%.

I think that the lesson for me is that the two things that work are

1. putting a lot of time and effort into stock selection while also being very talented at it (which I don’t do)
2. safe, boring and very patient low-cost, diverse index-trackery strategies (which is what I do, 95%).

@rod

Best.
Ethereum, Netflix, Vanguard Lifestrategy 60 (all +40-50%) [2019 update: the numbers are lower!]. With eth and nflx I learned that the market is essentially random from my perspective. Vanguard gave me the habit of investing regularly and thinking long-term. […]

Best. And Worst.
1997: I worked at Football365. 18 months later, the company had IPOed and the gain was, er, life-changingly big. Like many others working at dotcoms back then I felt like a master of the universe. And then the stock market fell over horribly in March 2000. I ended up with about a 100% gain, but the drop in value from what it had been made it feel like the worst of losses. But I learned so much working there and made a career, so from the distance of 2018 it’s a win.

Worst.
2008: After my co had a good year I invested - I will weep if I say how much, so let’s just say “a large sum” - in a property bridging loan fund a banking person said was safe and high performing. It did very well for several months until, suddenly, it didn’t and collapsed. I lost a lot of money, and learned that if the amounts are big I should invest only in things I understood, that I needed to understand risk better. These days I think about what would “minimise my future regret” in future investments.