I’d finally built enough courage to start investing real money…

It took me 6 years to get to this point, but I finally felt I was ready.

I opened the brokerage account on Firstrade.  Sent the money… And once it cleared, began buying stocks.

Real stocks with real money for the first time ever.

Even after 6 years of preparation, my finger hovered over the mouse button for what felt like five minutes before I put the buy orders in.

I was excited, nervous, and even relieved to finally take this step toward building my wealth.

Hell, I’d spent 6 years preparing… I was ready.  Now all I had to do was wait to see what Mr. Market thought of my first ever investments with actual cash.

Turns out this preparation was not enough.

Mr. Market didn’t like my investments… And he kicked me in the teeth.

I’d prepared 6 years for this moment to invest real money in the stock market… But within six months the stocks I’d picked were down 50%.

Not just individual stocks… The entire investment portfolio.

Down 50% in only 6 months… After 6 years of preparation.

I was a complete failure. I was in shock. And I didn’t know what to do.

So for days I just stared at my brokerage account wondering what happened… And thinking through the following process over and over again.

Should I tell my wife? I’ve got to tell my wife… I’m a horrible liar so she’ll know when she asks anyways.  Plus keeping this from her would be wrong.

But what should I say?  Will she be upset?  Will she cry?  Will she leave me?  Will she think less of me?

All I wanted to do, was to make money for my young family… I wanted to provide for them with the knowledge I’d built over 6 years.  And I wanted them to be proud of me.

But I failed miserably at all this… To make things worse, the money I lost – I couldn’t afford to lose.

That was all we could afford to invest then.

This may not have happened to you as it did to me… But I’ve talked with countless investors over the years who have lost A TON of money in their investment accounts.

How did I lose 50% of my entire investment portfolio within 6 months of investing?

Because even after 6 years of preparation, I didn’t know how to value stocks at all… And the only “analysis I did was to invest in stocks that had “good looking ratios.”

I talked about why I still didn’t know how to value stocks after 6 years in last week’s post – Why It’s So Hard to Find Margin Of Safety When Investing.

And I only briefly mentioned how this led to 50% losses when I first started investing.

But because, I only bought stocks that had “good looking ratios.”

This also meant, I didn’t even know what the company did most of the time for business… Where their business operations were… And I read ZERO annual reports, proxies, and quarterlies so I missed every single red flag about a company.

Don’t invest like this.

If you’re going to pick individual stocks you must know how to evaluate them well.  You must know what to look for in terms of both opportunities and risks.  And you must know how to value the stocks too.

How can you do this?  How can you avoid losing 50% of your investment portfolio like I did?  How can you make you and your family proud of how well you invest and build wealth?

Our Value Investing Masterclass can help you do all these things well. And fast.

How well and how fast? 

In the first 9 years of my investment career – after the events of the above and after dedicating myself to learning everything I could about evaluating stocks – I’ve produced average annual investment returns in the portfolios I manage of 23.5% per year.

This puts me just behind the Great Warren Buffett when compared to the first 9 years of his career where he produced average annual investment returns of 24.2% per year.

Yes. The guy who lost 50% of his investment portfolios within 6 months of starting to invest now manages investment portfolios.  And does it well.

But doesn’t learning about investing take a while?

Yes and no.

In my opinion, investing is something you can never master because there’s always more to learn.

But you can learn how to invest well fast.

How?

Check out this short video from a session with one of our students Damian.