Lost my wedding expenses to stock market
2019 come and go. In the blink of an eye, it has been 10 years since the Great Financial Crisis took place. As I look back, I can’t help but feel intrigued at the transformation of my wealth building journey. This blog was borne in an era of great financial upheaval and also at a time when I was struggling financially. Specifically, 2009-10 was the period in which I lost a substantial portion of my wedding expenses to the stock market.
The loss was attributed to a poor strategy executed for one of the penny stocks – China Enersave. I have always maintained that there is no good or bad stocks. In investing, there are only good or bad strategies. When the share price of a stock dived, you can always choose to cut loss or short-sell. In my case, I did neither. The loss of my wedding expenses culminated in one of the biggest challenges that I had to face in the course of my financial journey.
Losing money to the stock market is not the end of the world. But being on the receiving end, it did feel like the end of the world. This is especially so as I had lost my wedding expenses. During that period, I was actually on a “winning form” due to a series of successful trades on penny stocks. But it took just one bad trade to set my wedding expenses by one-third. I was forced to either postpone my wedding or borrowed from family or relatives. In the end, I chose to borrow from my own insurance policies.
Losing money in stocks is not fun. It is also not a laughing matter. I remember losing plenty of sleep and being in a state of denial. Many times, I felt like punching the wall and kept asking how could my investment thesis be so awfully wrong. During that period, my mind was in a complete state of disarray and I could not help thinking of the investment loss day and night. Needless to say, my performance in my job got affected as well.
The saga of losing my wedding expenses was a humbling experience. It forced me to re-examine my investment process and changed my view on wealth building. Obviously what don’t kill you will only make you stronger but investors must learn from their mistakes in order to become better investors. Most importantly, I was determined not to repeat the same old mistakes again. Due to this, I have institutionalized a set of framework for stock investing and distilled them to the following points. Until today, these pointers still serve me well and I am sharing these with readers.
Lessons from losing my wedding expenses
Never invest in monies you cannot afford to lose: This may sound so cliché and common-sense to most people. However, most [This is a premium article. The rest of the content is blocked and can be accessible by SG Wealth Builder Members only. To read the full content, please sign up as member.]
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