“Even professionals can’t predict what will happen next” <- very true Kat! I think in this type of market (2020/21) it's quite hard to convince people about 5% a year investments when 5% A WEEK exist :)

Your Tesla shares more than covered for it my Ninja friend, right? ;)

Ah yes…. a pint would be nice! Life is quiet here, thankfully, given what’s going on. “The life of the index-fund investor” haha. I hope your Swedish adventures are going well. Should have some stories to tell!

Thank you, Michael. I am with you completely. Reminds me of one of your top blog posts about opportunity cost and your dialogue with your friend in the comments section. I love my work and what I do however my pursuit of FI should not come at the expense of losing my peace of mind. It’s strange thing to say and I would not have believed myself five years ago but it’s truth in my case that since I started my FI journey and achieved a number of milestones I set for myself, I have started enjoying my work even more; I am less stressed about the job and there is lot more enjoyment and learning in day to day work as the daily grind is no longer about paying debts and worrying about expenses.

I for one had FOMO over GME, so much so that I proceeded to throw £500 down the toilet with other meme stocks. Better that than my whole portfolio though.

I hope all is well in London and with the baby – I can’t wait until we can have a pint together again!

I agree with you, there’s no point in waiting to invest if you’re planning on doing it regularly, not just as a one-off. Back in 2017, a friend working in the financial industry told me that the stock market was valued too highly and investing now would be dumb. I didn’t follow his advice and started investing in 2018 – and am very glad I did so. Even professionals can’t predict what will happen next.

Imagine if the markets became even more speculative, Mariano! +1 for doing research and even more importantly learning history. “It doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes”.

I really want to play devil’s advocate and seek signs of growth, GDP increasing and productivity gains. Reading the ‘Big ideas’ report by Cathie Wood fills me with optimism. But these things take time to show up and I think price has front-ran the fundamentals recently. I hope I’m wrong!

You reminded me of the “Random walk down the wall street”. Very insightful comment. I agree with you, choosing which companies to invest in has become a tough game against all the professionals. I think timeframe is where the individual investor can have the upper hand.

No need to give quarterly reports or care for annual performance if you think there’s value in a particular company/sector. No need to justify selection to shareholders or committees. But easier said than done though. Outperformance may never show up and given the extra effort it requires, I’ll pass!

Glad you found the book useful, Vl. Apparently, a media company acquired the rights to it and they’ll turn it into a movie or series. Should be interesting!

Another good topic you decided to write about. I have the same feeling. It has been easy to have some decent profit since the 2008 crash if you just invested in a few index funds, S&P 500 and the rest.

I guess what we’re seeing is a combination of people sitting on their savings plus the feeling of ‘I’ve gone through a pandemic, nothing worst than this could happen, YOLO’. If you then add retail brokers like RobinHood, Freetrade, 212 Trading that charge nothing for dealing and super easy to sign up to the mix, then the market is in for a roller coaster ride.

GameStop, AMC and all the other gamma squeezes that recently happened, were similar to the gold fever in the US during the 19th century. A few lads found gold so everyone thought they could jump onto the money wagon. This plus the above mentioned will just change how the markets work and I assume it will become even more speculative.

The market has always been speculative, but now more people can get into and speculate, which brings the Volatility to an entire new level. To give an example, Crypto is now what the market might be in a couple of years if this continues. BTC on the other hand will be less volatile in a couple of years, if it becomes the digital collateral of the world (if nothing drastically changes in the future that is).

The only remedy for this is DO YOUR HOMEWORK before investing. Whether it is Crypto, Stocks, Funds, Bonds, Gold, Silver, it is essential that you understand what you are doing.

My takeaways from everything that it is happening:
1. Be able to filter the bad from the good analysis/research currently available.
2. Understand in what I am investing my money.
3. Focus on my long term goal.

I believe that if I follow the above, it will be less likely that I get distracted with all the noise happening on the side.

Cheers!