I have been investing in the stock market now for 4 years and although I haven't made staggering progress, I feel I am on the right path. Today's post is a little different from my usual post. I will be talking about how I began investing in the stock market and a little about what I have learned along the way.

Learning About The Markets

From as early as I can remember, I used to always search "how to make money online" or other similar search terms. I have always had an interest in saving money but for many years I didn't even consider the stock market as any form of way to grow my wealth.

I managed to learn about the concept of passive income when I was fairly young as I used to pursue being a YouTuber and of course that meant I knew about fact you could make money through ads on YouTube. It took a long time before I actually made any money through YouTube but I knew there was something special about making something and having it make money after you have finished the project for as long as it's popular.

I didn't know this type of revenue as passive income at the time but as I grew throughout my teens learning different methods to make cash online I began to notice more passive income revenue streams seemed possible through the internet. Because of this, I became obsessed with trying to find different ways to make this sort of money.

For a long time as mentioned, I went down the YouTube path. In fact, you can checkout those channels still. RobertDoesTutorials was my most popular channel which taught people how to edit videos. Another one of my channels, Robert Watkin was a vlog style freerunning channel.

I don't upload to these channels anymore due to different life situations and not being as interested in video making as I used to be. However, I did get RobertDoesTutorials to a point where it was making a little bit of money each month. Not a lot, but some.

Over time however I realised I was getting bored of YouTube after 7+ years on the platform across 3 different channels. I also had more priorities growing through my education as I wanted to be a Software Engineer. (at the time of writing this I am now a Software Engineer and am soon to graduate with my degree)

While having less motivation and less time to carry on with YouTube I wanted to find more passive income possibilities that didn't require as much time as I was too occupied. Of course, I was understanding the concept that some level of work has to be put in to gain some rewards so I was beginning to think there was no choice at that point.

Then in the later half of 2018 I began seeing some videos on the stock market. At this point I had only heard of the stock market through the likes of 'The Wolf of Wall Street' so thought it was something I could only access through living near Wall Street.

How wrong I was about that. After seeing the odd video on the markets I began to do a little more research. By complete coincidence at the same time I was shown an advert to download an app called MoneyBox. At the time I downloaded money box which let me invest in a Stocks and Shares ISA without me having to pick individual stocks.

I had at this point began learning the very basics of the stock market and how stocks work. Compound interest, historic long-term investing outperforming, removing emotional decisions from investing etc. While I still didn't feel comfortable to pick stocks individually I grew the stocks and shares ISA until the end of 2018.

During the Christmas period I had felt I had learned enough to open my first brokerage and use the money I had accumulated to begin picking stocks.

My First Stock Picks

So once I had this comfortability that I was ready to plunge in and see what happens, I had to find a broker to buy my shares through. At this point I wasn't aware about the apps I mainly  use now so I consulted with a family member who invests which I found about once I spoke up about me learning to invest.

I ended up using Halifax Share Dealing which in hindsight was not a good choice. At least not for the stage of investing I was in. I was making £60 per week and saving £30 while working part-time and attending college.

Halifax Share Dealing had a commission of £12.50 per trade. That meant if I saved £300 over 10 weeks and decided to purchase some stock and then eventually sell it, I would need to factor in a £25 loss from the get go. That's £25/300 = 8.3%!!!

To be down 8.3% on a stock from day one was not great. And to make things worse for myself I ended up investing in a company which in hindsight I do not believe in. I invested in Shell, the energy company. Now my investment thesis goes off disruptive technology that do good for the world. Shell does not fall in this category at all for me. 

It took quite a while before I eventually found the type of investing I like but as mentioned, I ended up falling into disruptive technologies. I got very lucky with my timing as during early 2019 I discovered Tesla stock and was amazed at the company. 

The stock market at the time didn't seem to agree but I took a risk on Tesla and it paid off. I bought my first 3 stock of Tesla in June 2019 for £480.74 which I then sold only a few months later in October 2019 £707.87. This somewhat short trade gave me confidence that it was actually possible to make money in the markets.

It didn't take me much time to realise Tesla still has a crazy amount of room to grow at which point I re-entered the stock and since have not sold any shares. I have been accumulating more Tesla ever since as well as other growth stocks.

The Past Couple of Years

Since the end of 2019/2020 I have been continuing to learn about growth stocks and investing in general. I have since became a lot more resilient to down turns to the point where whenever the market is crashing for reasons market wide, I get excited to buy more stock at a cheaper price. 

Using the dollar cost average approach I have been consistently putting money into the stock market every pay I receive. If stocks drop massively and I have reserve cash, then I purchase more. I have high faith that this strategy will work well over time to help me retire much earlier than I otherwise would have been able to.

Currently I have been tracking my investments through a custom spreadsheet I made on google sheets. On that spreadsheet (when I was bored in lockdown) I created a script which takes note of the value at the end of each day. Using that it constructs the dynamic chart below which shows my stock portfolio value over time:

As you can see my portfolio isn't the largest out there but is progressing. You will notice that my portfolio has very high volatility due to me only being in no more than 8 positions at any one time while also in the high speculative growth sector. 

I understand that with this approach I am more likely to lose a lot of money however I am also more likely to gain a lot of money. Being 22 years old at the moment I like the idea of taking the higher risk path as there will be no better time to try than today. I have the least responsibilities, and the most time in front of me to makeup for mistakes then I ever will.

The recent months have been hard for the growth sector however many of the companies at there core are doing well. Given my research and understanding of the companies I am in, I am very confident and have high conviction in my decisions so see this as a great time to load up as much as I can while not putting myself at risk through high margin. 

I also want to point out that the current value is lower than it otherwise would have been as around September 2021 I sold about £3000 from my stock portfolio to help fund my first residential property. At the time I didn't want to sell however looking back it seems that money has been better preserved from the recent crash being now preserved in my property.

Time will tell if all plays out well and to document this journey I plan to do regular portfolio updates on this blog and in fact the first one should already be up. If you are interested in following along with my progress to FIRE then subscribe to my blog using the subscribers tool (no email required).

Summary

For anyone planning to get into the stock market but are too afraid to lose money or not too sure what to do will see this as understanding no one is perfect at the start. I had no formal education, learned everything on line and in my eyes am doing pretty good. Even considering the recent downturn, I have still made more money than I have lost.

To put in perspective, if I had entered the market with the same strategy anytime in the last year then I would have lost money. This illustrates once again that time-in the market beats timing the market. The main things I have learned over the past few years come down to trusting data and my research over my emotions. I have also learned about how dangerous FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) can be. I ended up losing 80% of my Kodak position after the spike up in 2020. Thankfully that was a small position. 

I expect there will be many more lessons in the future for me but the main thing for people to understand is that if you get into the markets, you will make mistakes, you will lose money and you will be stressed at times. If you take that into consideration and accept them then you can learn from the lessons you come across to find what works for you and hopefully make some money along the way.

I have also realised just how little the education teaches people about there finances and there future. Like many people I had heard loads that "School doesn't teach us about money" but until you take the plunge into the financial world, you have no idea just how much is being hidden from you. I strongly believe if financial literacy and wealth growth was taught in schools across the WORLD then we would be vastly better off as a species.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Please let me know either on social media or in the comment section below. And if you want to get in touch with me more directly, then you can get me on twitter @portfolio_hub_

Thanks for Reading 😁