I didn't plan to be involved in trading, as I was taught that markets are generally efficient, and there is a small chance a rookie investor can earn money before other experienced traders or algorithmic robots will take away all the margins. I was concentrated on my core job.
Everything started to change with the
July-2019 Revolut announcement for a commission-free stock trading which essentially lowered the barriers to start trading to zero.
2019 ended by a
large historical gain of more than 28%, then COVID started in 2020 with the 30% downturn just in 3 months (WIKI:
2020_stock_market_crash). I didn't believe that any fundamental growth factors were broken, so I decided to chase this investment opportunity.
I realised that if I could get more than 3% annual return (which was my current mortgage rate). I could increase my total wealth just by selecting a conservative investment strategy and should never make another early mortgage repayment.
I'd spent last 10 years doing the business analysis and market research job, so I wanted to apply my strengths and basic financial markets understanding to check all the hypotheses and ideas I found in the press.
I started to spend the considerable part of my free cash flow on stock market investments, which increased my learning pace and gave me satisfaction of doing something for myself.