My first year of investing

It’s already been a whole year since I started investing in the share market through Sharesies, and what a year it has been! I know this is a travel blog but I’ve been on a different kind of journey since the big C has made travel to and from New Zealand over the last 18 months has been very hard. This is not in affiliation with Sharesies at all (but holler at me Sharesies if you wanna collab!) so if I sound like a fangirl, it's simply because I am one. I will share some referral links in this article, these are not in collaboration at all but some sites give you a referral code so if someone signs up because of me, they get a bonus and so do I.

So I don't just waffle on and on, because I could, here's what this post will have:

1. Who am I and why am I investing?

2. What I've invested in

3. What I've learned about investing along the way

4. My current strategy

5. The resources I’m using

Just a heads up, I’m sharing all of this because there has never been a better time in history to be able to access the stock markets. With the rise of websites and apps like Sharesies, Hatch and Stake in New Zealand and similar overseas equivalents making it accessible, I think you’d be silly to not at least give it a go. You don’t need to go in blindly though and definitely don’t risk all your hard-earned cash, but you might find some of the resources I share quite insightful and helpful. Let me know if you’re convinced at the end of this to start your own investment journey!

Disclaimer: this is not legal financial advice and I am not a financial advisor in any way, this is all just general information based on my experience.

1. Who am I and why am I investing?

Well, I'm Amber and if you already know me or have been following me on social at all, you'll know I'm a 20-something year old from New Zealand who loves travel and is pretty good with social media. I do it for a job as well as for a hobby. But being a more creative type means that I'm not as good in other areas, namely anything to do with business and money. Although I am on decent a decent salary and I know I have the potential to earn more, I know I won’t ever be earning the big bucks on my current trajectory and so I decided to try and learn how to make my money work for me and not just be working for my money.

Before getting started with Sharesies (referral link) I knew absolutely NOTHING about the investing world, but I cottoned on to the fact that COVID times were bad but that would mean shares would be going cheap and so I thought that's as good a time as any to dive in. It was kind of the wake up call I needed since I’d heard about things like Sharesies and Robinhood (so many US podcasts I listen to run ads for Robinhood, you’d think I would’ve gotten the hint sooner) for a while beforehand.

2. What I've invested in

You may not realise it, but it’s likely that you're already an investor! Anyone with Kiwisaver (if you're not from New Zealand, that's what we call our superannuation/401K scheme) is technically already investing. When I moved back to New Zealand after my big stint abroad I realised that I wasn't utilising my Kiwisaver enough. So, I changed it from whichever bank my first employer enrolled me with when I was 15 to Juno (again, not sponsored, just like what they do but they finally have a referral scheme, use my link here). They have the lowest fees in the country I believe and I liked the fact that they are an actively managed fund and it really showed during the brunt of COVID. I also upped my personal contribution to 8%, the maximum, and changed to a Growth Fund. A Growth Fund has more ups and downs (high risk), but so far has done really well for me and I’m glad I made the changes that I did.

Sharesies is a platform in New Zealand that allows kiwis to buy shares in companies and ETFs that are listed in New Zealand's stock exchange and a few others around the world. I jumped in just after markets in the world started to plummet because of COVID and bought a bunch of shares in companies that I knew nothing about but thought would rise in value. Since then I have invested in more and some worked out well (shout out to The Warehouse Group) and others didn't (I learned my lesson about buying something because of hype thanks to Cannasouth).

On Sharesies I am currently invested in these companies: A2, Afterpay, Air New Zealand, Cannasouth, Mercury, Neometals, Vector Acquisition, The Warehouse Group, and XERO. Also the ASX, NZX, and NASDAQ exchanges and these ETFs: ARK Innovation ETF, Smartshares Global Automation & Robotics, Smartshares Global Equities Responsible Fund, and Smartshares US500 Fund. I don't have a lot invested in any of them but I try and put in a minimum of $50 a week so it will add up in time. Just for an idea of how I’m going, my portfolio the last few weeks has been sitting around +8% and the worst it got in the last year was maybe -5% but that wasn’t for too long.

Lastly, I've also jumped on the crypto-wagon! I've only invested a couple hundred dollars so far and I'm just seeing how it goes. I've got Bitcoin and Cardano and so far so good. I think I'll put a bit more in now that I'm more confident with using my crypto wallet and buying them. No Dogecoin. I use Easy Crypto for buying and selling, and Exodus for my crypto wallet.

3. What I've learned about investing along the way

I have learned so much! But the first thing I've learned is that the more I learn, the more I learn that there is so so so much more to learn. Once you learn the basics of it, then you can start to learn how to read charts or how to interpret a company’s annual reports or investigate new markets and potential investing themes or future opportunities…honestly, the list just keeps getting bigger.

The second thing I've learned, and this is a theme that pops up in a lot of the podcasts I listen to about investing, is that the best time to start is now. It ties into the third thing which is that investing is about playing the long game (otherwise it's gambling). To kind of summarise it, at first it seems really fun to try and buy low and sell high to make a quick buck (AKA day-trading), but if you invest frequently and hold onto stocks for a long time (years not weeks or months) you will get better overall returns. That's super-simplified, but when you start on your investing journey you'll hear lots of things like "time in the market beats timing the market" and that compounding interest will give you amazing long-term results.

I've also learned the hard way that you need to do your own research and don't just buy shares because of the hype. Case and point is me buying Cannasouth right before NZ's cannabis referendum because of the hype, people assuming that it would pass and then Cannasouth stocks would go up and up. The opposite happened. If I had done my research I would've found that medical marijuana was already legal and the referendum wouldn't necessarily help anyway.

Lastly, because I could go on and on, having a strategy is vital. Otherwise, you're just going along blindly and doing what I did initially which was buying into hype and making silly mistakes. Even if you just have a goal in mind or make a plan for your first year, it’s something. That's the perfect segway for the final topic...

4. My current strategy

I ended up selling a few of the initial companies/ETFs that I bought into, even though they were making money because I realised I hadn't done my research and that I wanted to have a better strategy and work with that. And there are some shares (looking at you again Cannasouth) that I'm just waiting until they break even and then I'll sell them for the same reason.

I don't really have an in-depth strategy yet because I'm adapting it as I go, but the first year was kind of my testing phase and I think going into my second year I'll start to make better decisions. I've started to look at what I want to invest in for long-term growth and have identified themes and companies that I have more confidence in for holding longer. I've now got a very rudimentary portfolio spreadsheet set up to track everything (hit me up if you know how to do this effectively and have any tips) and I've set myself some basic timelines and goals. I will not buy shares in something new if it doesn’t fit in with my strategy.

5. The resources I’m using

Sharing resources is a huge part of helping others, which is ultimately what I want to do. Because like I said, none of this is financial advice, I’m only a beginner and there are far more intelligent, successful people out there who you can learn from too.

I’ll start with Sharesies, since I’m using their platform. I read some of their blogs and FAQs and have recently started listening to their podcasts Lunch Money, a weekly podcast about the NZ share market which is based on a panel discussion with Sharesies co-founders and industry experts, and Recap, a 10 minute daily summary of news from the NZ, Australian and US markets.

Next up is all the podcasts I have listened to. I wish I had discovered these guys earlier, but my main source of learning about investing and understanding all the jargon, was the Australian podcast Get Started Investing by Equity Mates, which is pretty self-explanatory. After I finished that series, I listen to some episodes of the Equity Mates podcast but it is very Australian focused so I just pick the episodes that I’m interested in, they might talk to a CEO or someone from an investment firm about more general stuff. I’ve also started listening to You’re In Good Company on the Equity Mates network, which is similar to Get Started Investing but by women, for women. There’s also Cooking The Books with Frances Cook by the NZ Herald which is another New Zealand podcast which talks about more generic financial stuff. And lastly, InvesTED, which is a US father-daughter duo that go into more in-depth topics in the investment world and follow Warren Buffet’s investment style so he gets brought up a lot.

Then there’s social media. I would recommend you be pretty careful about who you choose to listen to on social media! I am in the Sharesies and NZ Investors Facebook groups, which are both filled with helpful information, opinions about all the hot topics in the investing world and lots of people who have never heard of Google and ask questions like “what should I invest in?” and “what stocks are cheap now that will be worth lots in the future?”. While I do believe that people should be encouraged to ask questions in these forums, I would advise that you should do further research into anything that is mentioned by a fellow Facebook user, even if they’re one of the nice ones, and if you’re asking these questions you are just setting yourself up for getting ridiculed, abused and potentially led very astray. On Instagram, I follow @equitymates, @tashinvests, @ladiesfinanceclub and @themotleyfool.

And finally the investment/financial websites/apps. You’ll find that most investment websites usually have a subscription fee but there’s plenty of stuff you can still access on the free version or a trial period. I love Simply Wall St as a resource, it’s one of the more popular stock analysis sites I’ve heard of but I am only on the free plan so have a limit to what I can see and the companies I can follow. Definitely check it out, it’s a wealth of information including a company’s share price, dividend info, valuation, ownership info (including insider selling/buying), financial health, and much more. Yahoo Finance (pictured above) is another standard, it’s got so many charts and graphs on information about every stock market and the companies listed on it. I guess it’s all the raw data that Simply Wall St has made digestible. There’s an app called Reap which is similar to Yahoo Finance but for the NZ market that is good but I deleted it since I just use Yahoo Finance. I won’t go on, but lastly, I’ll just mention that any exchange has noticeboards you can check, any ETF companies or stockbrokers will have lots of info to look at on their websites and individual companies listed on an exchange should have a whole Investors section on their website for you to peruse. You can see why I said up top that there’s so much to learn about!!

Referral links, in case you missed them in the article: Sharesies, Juno Kiwisaver & Easy Crypto. Images are from Unsplash.

I hope someone has actually read this whole thing and been inspired to give it a go themselves! If you have, or if you have more questions or your tips to share, please leave a comment below.