Investment Strategy

I'm not certified of anything. So, this is not financial advice. Just some thoughts on my strategy and an excuse to put this in writing somewhere.

The hardest part of investment, in my experience at least, has been sticking to a plan. The biggest part of that problem is not actually defining what my plan is. Another part of it, especially in the beginning, was simply the lack of experience and information from which to make a plan. It is hard to get past that latter one without some time. After all, everyone starts out without any real experience.

There are a few things I like to define in my plans these days:

• How am I breaking up my investments? Usually, this is in terms of how long am I planning to invest a sum of money. In most cases you'll have a bunch of different financial goals. All with very different time horizons.
• Then, for each investment, what does that mean? What does my risk look like?
• For my retirement funds, I'm still a ways from retirement. So, I'm not planning on touching the money any time soon. I may make minor adjustments every 6 months to a year. But, there is definitely no day to day trading going on there. I stick with managed plans which are high risk, but nothing I would call a gamble over that time period.
• Then I have a fund where I put money for vacations, etc... When money goes in, it will likely come back out within 1-2 years. It is short enough term that riskier investments don't make a lot of sense. I want to gain more than I would in a savings account, but if I lose money I don't really want to lose a giant chunk of it. So, here I stick with low to medium risk investments. I also have less issue re-assessing how my money is performing here more often. But, unless something major happens I'm generally trying not to touch this more than once every 1-3 months. And if things are going well enough, I'll even leave it untouched longer.
• Then I have a small fund that I'm basically day trading with. At the moment this is invested in crypto, but it doesn't really matter. There is no real time horizon here. I just make sure that this account is small enough that I won't cry if it goes to zero. I feel like it could be a good idea for most people to have an account like this. It is a LOT easier to NOT touch the accounts that you shouldn't touch when you give yourself one that you ARE allowed to touch. It is also a great way to learn that the markets are not easy to predict. I've used this to build out some more concrete rules for how I manage my money in general:
• If an asset gains by more than 10% in a day, 15% in a week or 20% in a month, then I withdraw some percentage of that. The argument is, those are aggressive growth rates. There is a good chance that unless there is a really good reason for the spikes, that the market will correct. 
• And, if I have funds kicking around in the account and the losses are similar (and again with no notable reason), then I'll buy on such dips. 
• I won't sell on dips unless I know why it is dipping and it seems unlikely to recover
• I also won't pump money into an account just to buy on dips either, especially not on this account
• And, I can apply these same things I've learned to my other accounts.

That last account is where the magic happens really. It doesn't need to just be high risk stocks or assets. It can be the same stocks or type of stocks you're holding in your other accounts. It is most important that it is actually a separate account. Beyond that, if there is a part of the market you're interested in understanding, use THAT money to learn the market. Not money you're gonna care about if you make a mistake.

It is also a good way to learn about how the services you use get their profits. For instance, I was buying when the stocks were lower and selling when they were higher at one point and still taking a loss. It turned out I hadn't been paying attention to how my provider was factoring in their cut. 

For me, I'm using a somewhat popular trading tool which is a bit limited in what stocks and crypto are available. The advantage though is that most of the assets react like stocks on some level. So, it would be incredibly rare that not following my own advice would be bad. If the gains aren't high enough I'll still lose money to paying for the service. And if the gains are high enough and there is no reason for the rise or fall (or no really good one) then the market is likely to correct itself within hours to days. So far I've been bitten every time I didn't follow my own advice. Which is a good sign that I'm starting to arrive at reasonable guidance for myself.