Learning from mistakes

Investing in the stock market is about learning from your mistakes. Mistakes that are made due to a common human characteristic: greed. Greed clouds your vision, imparts bias, and makes one do stupid, irrational things, all with the thought of making loads of money in a very short time followed by endless days of sunning oneself on the beaches of some tax haven island in the Caribbean.

The vast majority of traders learn quickly that this is not to be.

So, why is investing about learning from mistakes? Because in hindsight, we see where our greed got the best of us, where it forced our hand into pushing that buy button on a stock at a ridiculous price hoping... no... knowing, that that ticker was going to rocket us to financial freedom. That fantasy generally ends up being a loss of a few thousand dollars, after which we regroup to think about what the hell just happened.

But, making mistakes is good because you've realized that it was a mistake. This is the way we humans learn. Once you've recognized your mistake, you can learn from it. Unless you were born with rabbits feet coming out of your ass, you're like everyone else, making a ton of mistakes along the way, but learning from each and moving in a different, and hopefully, better direction.

Investing is about looking at the past. It's the only information we have that is fact. No one can predict the future. If we could we'd all be done with investing, spending our millions in countless different ways, one of them not being stuck in front of a computer watching numbers flash green and red.

This blog is about my mistakes in investing. Perhaps you can learn from these mistakes and use this information to prepare yourself for when you do the same. Simply avoiding the mistakes of others is far too simple and efficient! You have to feel the pain to remember anything! It's just the way it is...