My Biggest Investing Mistake
The Painful Truth About FOMO and Markets
Everything goes and everything comes back. And along the way, we all get distracted.
It’s not an empty phrase. It’s what happens when you’ve spent years knee-deep in the market. You see it in gold, in stocks, in Bitcoin. They go up, and you feel the FOMO. They go down, and people treat them like they never had any value. You forget about them just when they’re closest to giving you the joy you’ve been waiting for. That’s the game. Everything goes and everything comes back.
Today I want to confess my mistakes. Because there are plenty. And if something saved me, it was having a simple and diversified system. Not diversified in the traditional sense of owning 200 assets with no conviction. I mean diversification by role: cashflow, reserve, optionality. Assets that serve different purposes in different moments. That way of thinking has helped me stay intact.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t fallen into traps. Quite the opposite, I’ve stepped on all of them. Buying more gold just as it surged. Entering stocks when momentum was everything. Wanting to buy more Bitcoin every time it crossed 120,000 again. Full-blown FOMO. As if there would never be another chance.
And the reverse too. Seeing Bitcoin drop and thinking: “That’s it. It’s over. This won’t come back.” Seeing gold flat for three straight years and deciding it was a waste of time. Completely ignoring assets I once studied passionately. Everything goes and everything comes back.
Where I’ve failed the most, without a doubt, is when I’ve moved pieces around inside the portfolio in my worst emotional moments. The worst thing isn’t selling. The worst is making internal transfers when one asset is down and another is up. Because you think you’re being rational. You tell yourself, “it’s more prudent to hold a bit more of this now.” But deep down, you’re running away. You’re selling low to buy high. And dressing it up with elegant arguments.
That happened to me once with stocks and Bitcoin. I tried to justify it as rebalancing. But it was fear. Another time with gold and index funds. Same pattern. Once you realize your mind is looking for safety and that your portfolio isn’t there to give you safety, but to give you long-term freedom, your approach changes.
Now I run a very simple system: I repay debt against pledged assets, which is a way of continuing to accumulate the assets I’ve used as collateral. MSCI World, gold. And all new money, absolutely all of it, goes into Bitcoin. Not because I think it will go higher. But because Bitcoin is the tool that lets me be my own bank. Because I run a company and I know how hard it is to get financing. Because I’ve had to go to a bank branch in person just to close an account. Two hours of my life and 100 dollars in hidden fees.
Never again.
I don’t want to ask for permission anymore. I want sovereignty. And in my system, Bitcoin fulfills that role. I don’t need it to go up. I just need it to not disappear. The rest is secondary.
Everything goes and everything comes back. And the worst thing you can do is react every time something moves. Because when something triggers your FOMO, you’re probably close to it reverting to the mean. And if something disgusts you, it’s probably cheap. It’s that simple.
Stick to the plan. Stay invested. Adjust slowly. Never in the heat of the moment. Because when the cycle turns and it always does you’ll want to be in. You’ll want to have endured. Not out of pride. But because that was the plan.
Read this and don’t recognize me, recognize yourself. Because you know it’s happened to you too.