gofi

I’ve started walking again. But more then the walking, I enjoy daydreaming during these walks – on how my world would’ve changed if – and lately it’s been all about AMC – if we had all our emergency fund in AMC when the year began. Especially after we’d already seen GameStop earlier.

Our $40K would’ve grown by 2837.31% to become  1.1 million.

Then again, given my track record on holding individual stocks, I would’ve been out of the game a lot earlier.

Before I discovered index funds, I held a few stocks – Tesla, before it split 5 ways. I’m not even going to bother checking what they’d be worth today. Suffice to say, it’s grown over a 1000% since. I sold them at a 100% gain.

If only I hadn’t been greedy.

Around the time I had Tesla, I also had China Digital. It doesn’t even have a ticker symbol now. I could’ve sold this at a 100% gain as well.

If only I hadn’t been greedy. You see, the thing with greed is that there’s no escaping it. You’re greedy if you sell. You’re greedy if you don’t.

(I actually still have this in my brokerage account and I’m not sure how to sell this given it is $0)

I don’t regret these losses (and there’s a few more like that, one where even the company website just vanished). I’m just grateful these experiences came early for me to realize I was not going anywhere with stock picking. I mean, what do you make of someone who holds both Tesla and China Digital? I’m just grateful that these failures led me to Index funds.

With index funds, it’s a different game. Our bet is on American resilience, in the hope that everyone does well. I believe this to be a better game to play, and worth staying in the field (to say nothing of the fact that they actually perform better is almost karmic).