It was raining money again. Why would I not be interested in becoming richer faster? Bitcoin was making new peaks every day, but I was burned before and was sure not going to take a chance this time. Since I knew little about crypto, I made my first informed investment decision of my life to stay away from it.

After being married and moving to the US, I had a decent amount of savings in my account, with which I was looking forward to buying a house in December 2017. After my initial experience in investing, I never invested another penny and forgot about my securities account in India.

My friend took the time to explain to me what Roth IRAs, 401Ks, and Robinhood’s are. IRAs and 401Ks were simple decisions for me. I immediately signed up since it sounded like my Indian father’s PPF (pension fund), which he always recommended.

After looking at charts of some companies, I invested my savings into the stock market, which, as you remember, I was saving for a home. Why not Robinhood was such a hip App. A simple sweep was all that was required. As an amateur investor, I’ve made nearly all the mistakes possible. Anyway, it was January 15, 2018. Charts indicated these companies were going up for the last couple of years, so I bought FB, CAT, BA, JNJ, and a few others.

Again, I jinxed it! It was the first correction in over two years, and I quickly lost 10%, but this time it made me question what I was doing wrong. So I searched online and came across Monthly fool. They were giving many excellent suggestions, so I went with them and traded my stocks with stocks they recommended. It wasn’t the worst decision because those stocks went up quickly. And I could recover my losses and could take out money that I needed for the down payment.

I kept some stocks that were going up quickly just to be in the game’s thrill, and I thought I could lose some money with no impact because I didn’t know Warren Buffett’s first rule: Never lose money.

This time I was hooked and was curious to understand why my choices were wrong and why some stocks were doing good when the broader market was in a correction. It led me to the library, where I wanted to start with some basic knowledge. There were few books available, but I saw “The Guru Investor” lying at the back of the shelf, and I took it home. Today I can’t rate it as a good read, but I was convinced that I just got hold of a pot of Gold. The author explained his failed attempts in the stock market and how he took time to understand each of the most prominent investors and their strategies that have worked in the past. In his book, he laid those strategies as basic math formulas. I was convinced that it had given me the key to unlocking the secret of the stock market.

With this new knowledge, I was ready to conquer the Stock Market.