It's always darkest before dawn. I lost in excess of six figs and 85% of my capital in my first stint in the market as an absolute noob through what I can only describe now as fear and paralysis which left me gutted and weighed on my conscience for a long time.
I went away from HC and the market for almost 5 years, gathered my thoughts before I built up the resolve to have another crack at it. I backed myself that I would get to break even at minimum.
I asked myself tough questions as to what went wrong the first time, identified my mistakes, cynically evaluated everything i read on HC, maintained a positive attitude which is very hard to do when you are a pessimist by default, doubled down on the TA and my preferred method of analysis and set myself some mental rules for position size and entries and for the most part stuck to them.
I will admit to a decent slice of luck in holding a handy parcel of GMM from my first stint which put a gloss on portfolio 2.0 but also tried to make my own luck in freeing up funds from several large underwater positions to free up capital to put into better stocks which has been successful so far.
I'm now at a point where I am in excess of two bags up from the lows and have to "only" bag my portfolio from here to break even and I am confident I will be able to do it.
I've also found the whole HC thing this time around to be therapeutic as I don't get involved in emotional discussions on individual stock forums, mainly posting charts there and inflicting most of my ramblings on the poor souls who frequent the STT and BT threads.
I have the utmost admiration for what
@Freehold has created here and also to the great contributions from all and sundry which had been the source of most of the stocks I've had success on but probably more that I didn't act upon which have done even better.
