4 Mistakes Made in 4 Years of Regular Fund Investment

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The author shares the mistakes made in 4 years and 5 months of investing in funds since August 19, 2019, such as not regularly reviewing the positions, following big V's (influential figures in the investment field) to buy, spreading funds thinly, and manually increasing positions without a fixed strategy. The author also expresses the intention to make adjustments to reserve funds for retirement.

I started investing in funds steadily and continuously from August 19, 2019 (using the time of the first purchase record of a portfolio on Tiantian Fund). It has been 4 years and 5 months now. Today, I briefly reviewed some of the mistakes I made in these four-plus years.

The mistakes are as follows:

  1. Being too lazy to regularly review the position-holding situation.
  2. Buying carelessly, sometimes following a big V to buy a certain fund.
  3. Having too many ideas, spreading funds and energy thinly.
  4. Manually increasing positions without a fixed strategy.

Now let’s talk about each one in detail.

Being too lazy to regularly review the position-holding situation

Although I often read books and follow official accounts related to funds and also invest in practice, I don’t often open the fund app. The longest time, due to home renovation and being quite busy, I probably didn’t open it for about three to four months.

This is actually a good habit. I remember reading a saying before that the duration of regular fund investment is inversely proportional to the frequency of opening the investment app. That is, the more often people open the investment app, the shorter the time they can stick to investing. And in the Chinese investment market, within 1 to 5 years of investment, the longer the investment time, the greater the possibility of positive returns. So this is a good habit.

However, the intervals I had were too long, and that was a problem.

As mentioned in 2021 Summary, because I didn’t open the investment app for a long time and didn’t sell in time, the more than 25% return I got from two years of regular investment turned into only 5%.

Besides this, for each fund, the amount that should be invested varies under different valuation situations. It needs to be adjusted at regular intervals. In the past few years, I didn’t do this regularly. Instead, I just checked whenever I remembered.

Buying carelessly, sometimes following a big V to buy a certain fund

I’ve been following several official accounts related to investment and quite like the content they write. After reading for a long time, I thought most of what they said was right and in line with my own ideas, so I gradually became more trusting of them.

Sometimes they would share part of their position-holding situation or the reasons for buying a certain fund. In such cases, I rarely followed to buy. But after seeing it many times, I would occasionally do it.

However, everyone has different investment ideas. The reasons why others buy a certain fund may not be suitable for me. Moreover, the fund I buy may not be in an area I’m familiar with. Coupled with the fact that I often don’t check the investment app in time, I lost quite a bit of money.

Having too many ideas, spreading funds and energy thinly

I’ve always bought funds on Tiantian Fund. Tiantian Fund has a function that can aggregate all the funds I bought into a portfolio, which is convenient for calculating the overall investment return.

When I first started investing in 2019, I only knew about regular investment but didn’t know how to do it specifically.

Later, I got to know about index fund regular investment and found it very suitable for me. But at that time, I had already been investing for the same period, and there were quite a few non-index funds in the portfolio. In order to keep only index funds, I created a new portfolio and specifically allocated a part of the already small monthly regular investment amount to this new portfolio.

As a result, I had to manage two portfolios, consider buying more funds, and think about how to divide the limited money into two parts…

I was investing in my spare time and simply didn’t have that much time and energy to put into fund investment. Managing two portfolios was really a stretch. Before long, the index fund portfolio stopped operating, and it ended up in failure, as can be imagined.

Manually increasing positions without a fixed strategy

Although I’ve been investing for more than 4 years and have some ideas, I’ve never turned them into a fixed strategy. Usually, I would check the positions and make some adjustments whenever I remembered.

Most of the time, I indeed mainly did regular investment. But occasionally, I would manually increase positions when I thought it was relatively cheap.

For example, in early February 2022, after a period of decline, I thought it was quite cheap, so I manually increased positions several times with a significant amount of money. As you can probably guess, it started a two-year-long decline afterwards. It was really heart - breaking.

A better approach should be to formulate some strategies in advance and then try to follow these strategies as much as possible, only making a little adjustment when necessary.

Adjustments

Although I don’t expect to get rich by investing in funds, I hope to reserve more funds for my future retirement over several decades.

Now that I’ve discovered some problems, I need to make some adjustments.