Key person risk is a thing: MFG

Yes, a charismatic founder can be wonderful for a stock price, but ultimately the value of that single person is intangible. And once that person leaves, you're left with empty air.

Champion stocks can become falling knives. APX, still hold it, bought it at a “bargain price “ only to watch it fall much faster and lower. Still hold it, maybe fortunes will change now Meta is laying off 11,000 staff.

I have an appetite for high risk which is stupid, at 57 and started investing April 2020 I should be staying away from the likes of DTC, CSX, EOS and yet here I am. The first 2 are gone now, they were CGT offsets for my latest tax return and really very small losses

The biggest regret is getting caught up in FOMO and the hype of others either from paid services or forums, no not HC, hate that place.

But my winners are winning big. These are the ones that some/many say to avoid, banks and green energy miners. For the banks it was all in the timing, not looking to bu6 more banks but geez they are seriously green in my PF and LYC is a multibagger.

Lessons learned:

DYOR every single time. Balance your PF. Keep some of those major reds in your PF as a reminder of why you need to be more careful. Don’t beat yourself up, others will be more that happy to point out your flaws.

Biggest lesson learned:

Surround yourself with people who are investors not traders, the view is quite different. Listen to what they have to say especially if they have a different opinion, it’s all to easy to fall into the echo chamber trap with a side serving of confirmation bias.

I'm of little experience to people here, but after doing sweet FA investing for most of my life I encountered the bitcoin bubble, and made easy money, thought I was a champion, and the new future was here, the "system" was going to change (very 'rapidly' mind you for the amount of time money has been around). Watched it crash and burn several times and saw it recover on the way up... didn't sell and just watched it go back to nothing.. on the way back down I started to trade 'systems' which amounted to people selling courses and getting affiliate codes and making money off of everyone else's deposits and fee's - so lots of trading was encouraged - I guess you can all imagine what happened here.

Not DCA's into cheap ETF's or salary sacrificing into super when I was younger... from your age this is the easiest, no brainer hack in my opinion on how to get ahead with very little effort (IE start the compounding early).

Not being truly aware of my risk profile and what I was prepared to lose. Take what you think you are happy to lose and then halve it.. start there and see how you feel emotionally.

I'm now much slower, although this has hurt me with opportunities I could have taken but I didn't have enough capital to spare. So being careful with lifestyle and having decent amount of capital to allocate for different reasons and timelines is essential in my opinion - thats if you want to be more hands on. Which I am currently doing, but slowly.. I want to learn AND earn. I'm still 50% cash and am relatively similar to my strawman profile here.. Now my thought is to see what will be better.. harvest a little loss and throw everything at my now 5% home-loan repayments via the offset (is there anyway we can use stocks as collateral for offsets, since it's only discounting the amount of interest and not the loan capital?)

In summary, stepping back and leaving myself with options to use is what helps me sleep at night more. Ultimately the core market compounding will do the bulk returns.. Everyone thinks they will be above average.. by definition thats a hard thing to do...

Over the years I have made the Only Fools and Horses Del-boy statement "this time next year I'm going to be a millionaire" only to see my dreams evaporate.

One thing I would suggest is you can only love or not love a stock. My own view point is while I am in love it's a buy and hold, when it gets a bit on the nose and doubt creeps in, I like to sell (doesn't always work). When you sell, find another you love... but just because you have money burning a hole in your pocket doesn't mean you have to spend it that day.

But I do like to keep a pretty big number of stocks, usually about 20ish. So hopefully I then split the risk and don't lose 100k on one stock. I generally buy $5k in something I am not too sure about, $10k for most buys and up to $50k on something I have a strong belief in, but watch like a hawk. That way if a $5k stake goes to $1k, I have only lost $4k, which in the big scheme of things means I will only sulk for about one day before getting over it.