My investing journey

 I am a 41 year old normal Singaporean happily married with 3 lovely kids. My earlier investing journey was riddled with all the mistakes you could possibly think of - picking individual stocks that tanked (Noble, SPH, Starhub etc), contra-trading that went awry and margin trading of Reits which crashed when the pandemic struck in 2020. 

However, I am grateful and humbled for all the investing mistakes made in the past. Although these were substantial losses (some of them 6 digit losses!), they fortunately happened at an early stage of my investing journey. These cumulative losses helped shape my investing philosophy and greatly strengthened my resolve to succeed. I was determined to get back on track and do the 'right' things.

Indeed, the key aspect of successful investing is to know yourself - leverage on your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. 

Here are my core investing principles (learnings) after years of 'pain' endured:

1) Invest in broadly diversified low cost funds, instead of picking individual stocks.

2) Do not time the market. No one can time the market consistently. Trading frequently will inevitably reduce the market returns.

3) The broad market (not individual stocks) always goes up in the long run. 

4) Do not sell your stocks during periodic market plunges. Be mentally tough and ride them out. 

5) I want my money working as hard as possible, as soon as possible.

We will face setbacks from time to time. The most important thing is to pick ourselves up, learn from our mistakes and double up our effort to get back on track.

In this blog, I wish to document my investing journey to financial freedom and hopefully inspire some of you along the way to do the same. 

All the best!

Jay