My Journey in investing in my 20s

Why you should start investing in your 20s if possible

Investing in your 20s can have significant long-term benefits due to the power of compounding returns. By starting early, you have more time for your investments to grow and compound over time. Additionally, investing in your 20s allows you to take on more risk, as you have a longer investment horizon to recover from market downturns. Finally, investing in your 20s can help you achieve your long-term financial goals, such as saving for retirement or purchasing a home.

What if I invested $1000 10 years ago? (Past performance is not a guarantee of future results)

If you invested $1,000 in QQQ (Invesco QQQ Trust) 10 years ago, on June 2, 2013, your investment would be worth $4,118.19 as of June 2, 2023, assuming you reinvested all dividends. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.5%.

QQQ is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the Nasdaq-100 index, which is a basket of 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The Nasdaq-100 is known for its high concentration in technology stocks, which have outperformed the broader market in recent years.

However, it is important to remember that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. The stock market is volatile and there is always the risk of losing money when investing. If you are considering investing in QQQ or any other investment, you should carefully consider your investment goals and risk tolerance.

Here is a table showing the performance of QQQ over the past 10 years:

Year	Price	Return
2013	$60.26	-12.80%
2014	$73.75	22.00%
2015	$74.89	1.70%
2016	$102.36	39.50%
2017	$157.60	53.60%
2018	$156.91	-0.40%
2019	$184.23	17.60%
2020	$212.26	16.30%
2021	$309.17	45.20%
2022	$299.05	-3.70%
2023	$315.94	5.30%

As you can see, QQQ has had a very strong performance over the past 10 years, with a CAGR of 17.5%. However, there have been some periods of volatility, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. If you are considering investing in QQQ, you should be prepared for the possibility of short-term losses.

My Journey

There has been a lot of young individuals who are very interested in investing but do not know when or how to start. To be honest when I first started when I was around 22 years old, I had the inertia to start as well, from which brokerage to use to finding out process for it. After creating my accounts, I was throwing small amount of money, few hundreds at different counters in the SGX. Buying Singtel, Design Studio, Tai Sin, SGX , Nikko AM STI ETF and OCBC. Some ended up profiting but some completely went to 0 which made my overall negative.

Design Studio was a huge lesson for me as I saw it halt in trading and so until now, I am unlikely to be able to sell it off and to be honest, it was a painful lesson as I just bought it without researching much and the profit guidance came just after some time that I bought it. SGX and OCBC turned out well but the losses from my other counters still overpowered the gains.

I held on to my SGX holdings but stopped adding and instead move towards the US market (bought some individual stocks although I also bought the index ETFs). It was much better over there due to the bull market and I bought the index but also occasionally dabbled into individual stocks, still listening to what was popular and I bought in. It was all good as it was a bull market and crypto came along, I bought some BTC and ETH when they were low but in minute amounts then came specifically LUNA. I decided I was going to put a substantial amount of money into LUNA and liquidated all my SGX holdings and split it into US stocks and crypto, looking back now, I was glad that I did allocate some of that money into US stocks (Tesla) rather than all in on crypto.

I am sure you know what happened next, the money in LUNA/UST went to almost 0. I cashed out whatever was left and just swap it for BTC/ETH. If I did not lose that amount, I would have attained my financial goals quicker but it was a good lesson and I learned from it including profit taking and risk allocation as well as not being greedy.

After that, I am now just buying into index ETFs and with small amounts that I have remaining after purchasing index ETFs, I put them into ETH, that’s my overall strategy for no, I do get tempted to buy individual stocks but I control that urge haha and tell myself, 'no, I should be building a base of index ETFs first or rather that should be my priority before I venture further.' So yup, my 20s have been about experimenting, buying different things that usually resulted me in losing money and finally just settled on index ETF specifically VOO and QQQ. What and how is your investing journey so far?