Newbie's Sharing: The most important thing in investing

I've written quite a few articles on what I've learnt in 2022 and 2023. However, I thought I would like to share what I think is the most impthing to have in investing that I've learnt to allocate in my portfolio.

Would it surprise you to know that money is not the most important? While money is indeed essential, and the stepping stone to investing, keeping it is harder and growing it, well...Even harder. Most of us, especially me, have lost money in the stock market. Even today, if I minus dividends, I am still at a loss of $2800. Was the loss painful? Yes indeed it was but I changed my perspective. I tried to think of this as lessons. It is especially effective because I'm studying part time too and I found that if you "spend" your own money, you are more likely to learn as opposed to when we were younger (using parent sponsored funds which we didn't work for). Imagine, 2 years, yet still at a loss. But I've learnt how to invest better. This brings me to my first important aspect required in investing.

Time

I found time to particularly crucial in 2 aspects. The first is time to learn. When I first came in, I thought that investing was meant to be fast, impactful. Inspired by the "Wolf of Wallstreet", I went in guns blazing. Buying "Shiny" stocks like $Tesla Motors(TSLA)$  at $1900-2000 (almost $680 after split) and anything that was hyped and green, I felt the impact alright. The impact of loss. I remember sleeping for 3 hours and realising a loss of around $600 USD. This wasn't the first shiny stock I jumped on during the dawn of 2022 when stocks were at their peak and it won't certainly be the last. Since then, I've learnt not to buy stocks when they are green. 

I did the same for DBS (peak at Mar 2022) and repeated my mistakes in 2023. If not for stellar dividends from DBS, my losses would have ballooned. My loss in DBS today is around $200. Now it also brings me to another point of why time is crucial. I've come to realise stocks need time to grow (assuming you've chosen a great company) and everything else is noise. I've found that the market lives "in the moment". An example is recently, there was a dip in EV stocks. Articles like "It's time to sell NIO for good" or "Why you should no longer invest in Tesla" started to appear. Now, I'm not saying they are wrong but I just wonder why such blanket conclusions are made after just a quarter, especially when these companies are growing into the behemoths of EVs. I mean, we are heading towards an EV future right?

In light of this, I've allocated a few hundred a month to beef up my portfolio to include transport and EVs.

I've included:

1. Grab: 35%

2. Tesla: 15%

3. Nio: 25%

4. Misc mistakes (which I've kept to remind myself not to be impulsive, such as Magic Empire): 25%

As I grow in knowledge,  I will diversify my portfolio with more stocks but I'll need the time to grow, learn and invest.@TigerStars  @Daily_Discussion  @TigerEvents