It is a lonely journey in your investment journey. Nobody will be able to relate to what you are going through. There will be a lot of criticism in the investing forum. There will be idiots who will be laughing when you are all in with your investment and the world is falling. Today is just a small dip compared to what I have experienced before.
The wait can be long and depressing especially when every day is filled with nothing but bad news. You are going through something. However, nobody can appreciate what you are going through. It is going to be a very tough journey. It is filled with despair, self-doubt, and lots of questioning of your decision.
This is the journey of investing.
You need to walk the lonely path and encounter the sufferance to enjoy the fruits of your labour. Sometimes there’s no positive outcome at the end of the journey. It is about self-discovery and how you walk this path.
When the market is depressed, emotions are at play. You need to ask yourself this question, “Do you need the money now?” If you don’t need it, it does not matter whether it rises to the moon or collapses to the floor. We should not be touching money that we need in the short term such as weddings, traveling, and renovations.
I saw an opportunity to average down further but I want to conserve the cash for our upcoming family trip. We just need to assess what’s more important to our lives. We need to have a long investment timeframe. The investment journey is to last us a lifetime. There will be bound to be crashes and exuberance. We need to remain nonchalant and walk this path.
When you are young, you are probably heavy in 2-3 stocks only. Any disappointment in earnings or weak fundamentals will see a wipeout of 40-60% of your equity. It is painful but you need to learn from there. You need to continue to remain in the market after scrambling to learn from your mistakes. Pick yourself up and redeploy the funds if the company’s fundamentals are weakening.
When your portfolio grows to 6 figures, a correction will see your net worth drop 5 figures. This is just pure maths. You will learn how to get comfortable with it. Then you will grow to handle 7 figures. A correction will see net worth drop 6 figures quickly. Again, this is maths at play. I have not reached 8 figures but I can assure you a 7 figures drop will be the norm.
During my darkest days when I was alone in KL far away from family and my wife was pregnant during the MCO (COVID-19 lockdown), the family was in Singapore. I experienced my net worth dropped by approximately $600,000. I could not do anything to the stock market prices. Looking at it won’t push it higher.
Depressed? Yes.
Sad? Yes.
Self-doubt? Yes.
I just continue to keep myself busy with work. Thank God that the daily work was very busy, I did not have time to worry. I kept reminding myself that this too shall pass. With every paycheck, we just continue to average down. Just keep buying. Just keep buying the shares until they recover.
This is the way.
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