I'm on the cusp of giving up investing for good and just using a Cash ISA as I can't handle losing money anymore. Even in this ludicrous bull market I'm haemorrhaging money.
I started back in late 2019 after talking to a friend who was having a play in the stock market so had a little look about and deployed some money at the peak of the covid boom. Admittedly I didn't fully have the knowledge of ETFs such as VWRP at the time and the index funds that I had chosen weren't the best. Within days of lump summing it dropped like a stone so I just held the funds I had over the next 4 and a half years while they slowly got back to the money I had put in.
Once I had broken even after that chunk of time I had educated myself enough to just VWRP and chill the funds climbed and we're sitting pretty at 10% up which was the first time I had seen any real gain on the 5 years invested. But this was right around Trumps tariff drop last April. Coming out the other side of the dip I sold all of my positions ready to put everything into VWRP and just leave it. But once I had sold the crazy volatility and uncertainty I just sat out and watched for a bit. In doing so the market just climbed and climbed and I have missed out on 30% gain in the past year thanks to this. It's my own fault but to make it even more sour gold was flying so I put a bit of money into that and it immediately tanked. And again today I have put some money onto a semiconductor ETF and a chunk in VWRP and the same outcome after weeks of ripping up as soon as I put money in down it goes.
One can only laugh and I'm hindsight it reinforces the VWRP and chill mantra you see so much on here.
My own bad decisions have caused all of this and I need a mindset change but after a total 7.5% growth in my S&S ISA in 6 years I'm wanting to give up and just accept this won't work for me.