I’ve always wanted to dive deeper into stock market investing.
And in recent months, I finally did it.

I absolutely don’t consider myself an expert in this field. Even though I’ve done quite well and earned more than I initially expected, I’m far from someone who truly knows what they’re doing.

For months, I’ve been learning about it daily, yet I still feel light-years away from the people whose actions inspire me.

This is the first lesson I’ve taken from these months: investing is a continuous learning process. It’s not enough to understand what various indicators mean or how technical analysis works. There’s always something that surprises you. Never stop learning, or else it’s not much different from plain gambling.

Other painful lessons I’ve learned from investing in recent months:

1/ Don’t invest in something that’s already climbing or at its peak.
Obvious, right? Sure. But it’s hard to resist the temptation sometimes. You see something rising nicely, and you want to be part of that growth. The problem is, you never know when it’ll start dropping. And it will drop eventually.
My biggest investment failure last year? Allegro. A great company performing better than well. Yet, as of now, I’m down nearly 30% (position still open).

2/ Don’t invest in something you don’t understand.
Been there, done that. I got carried away by what people on Twitter were saying. I followed the trend, only to painfully realize that I didn’t understand the company itself.

3/ I experimented with different investment strategies.
From daily trading to long-term investing; stocks, ETFs, bonds—you name it. The more I experimented, the worse my results.

So, I changed my approach to investing, and what works best for me today is based on three core principles that I try to stick to:

1/ One investment strategy.
I prefer an aggressive approach.

• One (smaller) portfolio for long-term investments—months or even years. I put in the money and wait. Even though it’s tempting to sell, I hold.
• A second (much larger) portfolio for short-term investments. By short-term, I mean weeks, up to one or two months.

2/ If something is rising, I don’t get in. If it’s falling, that’s when it catches my interest.
I review historical data and look into the reasons for the decline. If they make sense to me, I act. Which leads us to the third and most important point…

3/ I invest in what I truly understand and can evaluate on my own.
I’ve lost money when I followed the crowd. I’ve made money when I could understand what was happening, why the decline occurred, and whether the company would recover—and why.

• My highest percentage gains? Tech companies (NVIDIA—obviously, but also others).
• My highest monetary returns? In the areas I know best: FinTech and its surroundings. XTB, Wise, Nexi, NU Holdings, CrowdStrike, JPMorgan.

It’s been a pretty decent year for investing. What’s the plan for the next 12 months? Keep learning. And keep investing.