Diary of a future rentier (3)

Only nine months after starting my first professional activity, I was already starting to invest in the stock market, with this still somewhat vague notion of "rentier" in the background. I already knew that I did not want to work all my life, but the ins and outs were not yet all known to me. So I continued on the dark path started with my career counselor, without really knowing where I was going to go. This time, reality caught up with me and showed me the path to follow, but not really in the way I expected.

I had barely invested my first savings in August 2000 when the market began to collapse. I had no experience in the stock market and all my plans for future financial independence collapsed at the same time. Persevering, I nevertheless continued to invest in 2001, thinking I could make up for it by benefiting from a rebound in the stock market. It was a bad move. Still persevering, even a little stubborn, it was the same again in 2002... a very bad idea once again.

At the beginning of 2003, I had been suffering heavy losses for almost three years. I could have given up, sold what I had left and left the stock market. At that moment, I was given a little helping hand from fate, first in the form of an unexpected sum of money, but also and above all because my job was becoming more and more unbearable. I was already starting to line up the hours of work, the responsibilities and the worries that go with it. So, instead of discouraging myself from investing, I told myself that I had to persevere once more and that sooner or later my efforts would pay off. And I couldn't have been more right...

This is how I started my 4th wave of investment, in March 2003, when GW declared war on Iraq. Buying at the sound of the guns... I was right to do so this time and thanks to my stubbornness I managed to wipe out my heavy initial losses.

This life lesson given by the market has served me enormously and still serves me today. I have thus become much more cautious with regard to my investments and with regard to my projections and objectives. I have also understood that even when the situation seems compromised, it can very quickly turn to our advantage (but the opposite is also true) and that we must therefore never give up.