One year at the stock market - a recap

I was celebrating my first anniversary as an active trader on the stock market a few weeks ago. Yay!

Now, it is time for a recap!

If I would need to summarize this year for you with just one word, it would be "intense".

As you most likely experienced it yourself, this "intense" does not only apply to the stock market but everything in the year 2020. I mean, dealing with a global pandemic due to the Coronavirus is intense - and crazy and scary.

Also seeing the market crashing heavily in the first quarter of 2020 was intense.

I had my stock-app open all day long, and I watched the share prices drop. Like any other, I had a hard time believing what I was seeing was real. The Coronavirus crisis has been a challenge in many different ways.

Looking back, I should have started buying stocks during that time as much as I could afford, but I was neither brave nor experienced enough for that. Were you?

At least, I was lucky enough not to sell anything, and so I was not losing any money directly.

Undoubtedly, the first nine months of 2020 have been a precious lesson for everyone - on the stock market and everywhere.

I think I can finally answer the questions the brokers are asking about risk tolerance. Last year I was more like guessing when noting down, that I have a higher risk tolerance - but to be fair: I think it was pretty accurate.

Did you panic? Or did your stop-loss settings threw your shares away at a bad moment? I think this was what happened to way too many people.

But I also learned a lot about the market and its speed of reacting to stimulus. It is lightning fast.

However - that learning and experience I gained during the last months do not mean that I will be braver or experienced enough to get fully in on the next crash, but I might be a little bit more proactive. We´ll see.

Ok - let´s go back a year to my starting point.

My start on the stock market

I think my start was pretty traditional.

Others might call it old-school because I went to my bank and asked them to open a depot for me. That was it. Well - that was the boring part.

The exciting part was just about to begin: Buying the first shares!! OMG - If you´ve done this before, it is such an exciting event and if not: I encourage you to join us on the stock market. The more we are - the better it is.

After intensive research, I was confident to make a good decision for my first shares and I prepared everything in my depot to finally place the order.

After hitting the button, I was like Whooohooo - wow! I am a shareholder!

I knew the costs for the depot and any trade were significantly higher than an Online depot, but I could not think that I would become a heavy trader. Therefore, I thought it would be a convenient solution for me and my buy and hold strategy.

And indeed it was.

I still have that depot with a handful of positions, and I plan to keep it that way long term.

ETF Saving plan

However - due to some limitations like being unable to create saving plans, I opened up a second depot. Here I am passively and stoically investing in ETF's. This one is purely for my pension plan, and I am not planning to touch it in the next 30 years (I keeping my fingers crossed, I do not have to).

Flexible and fun trading

Last but not least, I recently opened a third depot with an online broker to become even more flexible.

I wanted a depot that allows me to

• have saving plans for single stocks and ETFs and

• trade generally at lower costs.

You can see it as my fun and learning depot I am also using for a handful of speculations.

My conclusion so far: I find this super convenient.

Being able to only spend 2 Euros on a trade (in and out) is close to unbeatable, and even with the smallest position, I can quickly come into profit range.

Differences between the depots

The online broker does not give me the same amount of service, information, and features I have in my bank-depot. That´s ok. I am also not paying for it.

What I like is having the freedom to trade at a lower cost to get experience. This allows me to try myself on the stock market and gain some valuable experience.

I think each depot has its advantages, and I feel like I now have a pretty good setup for my trading-life. At least for the next few months. I´ll keep you posted in case I will expand or change my depots further.

How many depots do you use?

Or if you do not have any: What keeps you from joining us at the stock market?