Holding Through Hell: Why the Strong Hands Always Win (Part 1)

My investment journey has been anything but boring. Truth be told, there’s barely an asset class on this planet I haven’t touched in one form or another. Crypto, forex, equities, options, real estate, bonds, and even full-on memecoin degening. You name it. I’ve probably been there and also lost a lot shit ton of money across board.

In 2014, I landed my first job and after grinding for over a year, I found myself in a financial position I’d never experienced before. For the first time in my life, I had real money left over after covering all my expenses. Naturally, the next step was figuring out how to put it to good use. Back then, we didn’t have the wealth of information that’s so easily accessible online today especially in Nigeria. Platforms like Trove and Bamboo didn’t exist, so buying US stocks felt like a luxury reserved for people abroad. It’s wild to think that companies like NVIDIA were already around, yet most of us had no idea they even existed. I’d heard of Tesla and a few other big-name US companies, but owning their stocks felt completely out of reach so i didn’t bother myself with having any form of exposure to them.

After giving it some serious thought, I finally made what was probably the worst investment decision I could have made at the time- the Nigerian equities market.

You see, I had a friend at the time who worked in equities research and somehow convinced me to put my hard-earned money into a Nigerian bank stock. He went on and on about how it was a penny stock, throwing around financial jargon about how “undervalued” it was which was compelling enough for me invest N1 million (Which was my life savings as the time) into the stock and yep, it turned out to be a disaster. Bought in at N5 per share and, after a year of watching it bleed, finally sold at N1.30. To put it in perspective, my N1 million investment ended up being worth less than N250k after charges. Easily one of the worst investment decisions I’ve ever made.

Swore off equities and the next stop was putting my money into some fixed income. Somehow made a silly decision to invest in some obscure insurance mutual fund. Not sure what i was thinking. Funds were locked up for three years, and the returns? Single digits. Of course, it ended up becoming another disaster because the inevitable happened; Naira devaluation and depreciation kicked in, and the value of my savings took a massive hit. Back then, I hadn’t even considered things like exchange rate or Inflation risk and by the time the fund matured, over 50% of my net worth had been eroded.

To be honest, I probably used the proceeds to drink beer at W Bar.

That experience was a wake-up call. I made a firm decision to never rely on an asset manager again. If I was going to invest, I’d do it myself. I had the skillset, so why not use it?

Bitcoin solves this?

In 2016, I heard about Bitcoin for the first time on Twitter. I was following this OG (@Knightofdelta) who never missed a chance to remind us whenever Bitcoin made a vertical move. I watched it climb from around $300 to over $1,000 before finally deciding to take the plunge and invest. My average entry price back then was about $1,500 per BTC.

For a few months, I consistently put over 30% of my salary into Bitcoin and then it soared to over $20,000.

Whew, mans finally made real money from investing i thought.

Then i got greedy...

Exited Bitcoin at an average price of $15,000 to sort out some real-life responsibilities. After that, I had what felt like a smart idea at the time; Why not borrow to buy more Bitcoin?

Everyone was convinced it was heading to $100K within a year. If that happened, I’d 5x my money and easily pay off the 50 percent interest on the loan.

By my logic, for me to lose, Bitcoin would have to return less than 50 percent in one year. It felt like a sure thing. So, I borrowed over 200 percent of my annual salary and threw everything into Bitcoin right at the top then it crashed 90 percent from the highs.

Pain.

Investing Wasn’t Working — So I Doubled Down on My Career

After losing everything I had worked for over more than half a decade, I made a tough but necessary decision. I stopped chasing quick bucks through investing and shifted my focus to becoming the best version of myself at work.

Truth is, I was a mediocre employee at the time. Investing had become a major distraction, and it was affecting everything. I knew I had to level up. Not just to take care of my responsibilities but to pay off the creditors breathing down my neck.

I went all in. Spent hours learning everything I could to improve my skillset and gave more than 100 percent at work to fast-track my growth. And it worked! I got double promotions and increased my income by more than 5x in just a little over a year.

I cleared all my debt and, for the first time in a long while, found myself back in the same position I was in back in 2015. I started to consider investment opportunities again.

You see, this all happened at the perfect time. The world was just recovering from the ravages of COVID and both stocks and crypto were cheap. I doubled down on Bitcoin again and around the same time, I got introduced to equity options trading through some degenerate gamblers on Reddit.

After doing some proper research, I loaded up on Bitcoin and scooped a bunch of Tesla & Gamestop calls at the bottom. A year later, I made so much money that for the first time in my life, I genuinely didn’t know what to do with it.

I even googled my net worth just to boost my ego and found out I was richer than 90 percent of the global population. Not a single soul knew how much I had at the time, but everyone started noticing the lifestyle changes.

The plan was simple; exit the market once I hit a certain number. But that number kept moving. Then the bear market crept in from nowhere and just like that, I lost over 70 percent of my net worth again.

To be continued....