2021 is finally coming to an end and the countdown has already begun for the new year. It has been a roller coaster of an year to say the least not only with respect to markets but also life in general with pandemic creating havoc in many lives.
What were your most memorable takeaways from the year ? Both in terms of markets and life (both are so inter-connected )
Let us use this format for the sake of simplicity for the readers.
Hits :
Misses :
Hits: SL
Misses : Target
ahhahaha thats a good one @leodecaps
Here’s my answer :
Hits : market has taught me so many lessons this year than last 6 years combined (I think i can say market is slowly showing me compounding returns in terms of learning).
I have made good frnds on this tradingqna like @MarginCaller @anon75004691 @RahulKhanna who share some brilliant insights on how to study n view markets and businesses.
Misses : I didnt expect market to rise vertically this way and missed investment opportunities in many of my favorite businesses. this will be hurt for a long time.
One more miss…I bought rbl bank put on friday and exited on the same day …and on monday it crashed 20% …that was gut wrenching 
2021 has been a great year of learning for me. The lockdown finally provided me with the opportunity to learn about trading and investment. The impulsive upmove after the crash of march 2020, shattered a lot of myths I had about stock price movement. Here are some of my hits and misses.
Hits: I have extensively worked on my price action based trading system by forward testing it on more than 200-250 stocks daily for more than a year. I could fine tune my strategy based on the feedback I received to find optimal entry points on the weekly timeframe as well as intraday. My takeway was trading on the weekly timeframe is probably the most stress-free kind of trading possible. But it also needs a lot of patience to sit on cash while others are gambling away their money. I have also made progress on trading intraday but I still need to work on it further.
On the investing front, I have used screener.in extensively to interpret the quality of a stock based on its fundamental parameters. My takeway was company with low/no debt, and decent profits, sectoral tailwinds, and strong management is all that one needs to watchout for. Everything else is just another jargon in the jungle. I therefore, developed a system where in I choose fundamentally strong stocks and then take entry using technical analysis. Also, I think having a stoploss even for investments is necessary especially if there are banking stocks in your portfolio.
Misses: As I was testing and developing my system, I took very few trades and missed out a lot of opportunities due to my work related commitments. I have no regrets though. Market will keep giving opportunities and I am here for the long run.
On the personal front, I found that becoming spiritual helped me a lot in becoming trader. People say that Trading in the zone is best book for trading psychology, but I feel Bhagvad Gita is even better. Having control over your greed, anger, fear and emotions is probably the most difficult issues every trader has to overcome to go to the next level and this book really helps with that.
The last two years also put a lot of things in perspective. At a time when people are dying in lakhs around the world, the financial markets have created the highest number of billionaires ever. Even regular people like me, all of us are trying hard to earn and make money while there are less fortunate people who are hungry and dying because of lack of money. I realized that whatever I have in my life, I am very lucky to be in this position today. We should be grateful for whatever life has offered us and count our blessings every day.
PS: I am thankful to all the regular posters ( @Meher_Smaran @Prakashsingh @MarginCaller ) of tradingqna for keeping this forum active. Especially @nithin and the z-team for democratizing and providing easy access to financial knowledge in India.
Like every year, 2021 too did help in learning that there will always be opportunities missed. However, this year taught me to be more patient and give some thought before taking action in the market.
Hits: This year was more of an invest and hold for me (the way I wanted it to be). Understood the true sense of what long-term means in the last 2 years and thought of following it this year while being patient about my investments.
Sometimes this does not work but sometimes it does. Cannot time the market, but along with being patient, learned that one needs to exit whenever the outcomes are unfavorable and cannot sit on the long term appreciation gut. Alot of these things I learned from my experience are a sure shot hit personally if I maintain the discipline.
Misses: Have to get my price action, intraday techniques right. Did not really focus on trading this year, probably a big reason why I missed out on many day/swing opportunities.
Nevertheless, a lot has been learned and a lot to learn yet.
It’s said that years keep getting shorter as time passes because every additional year becomes a smaller fraction of your time on this rock. But it has been quite the other way for the last few years, the concept of the year is getting longer for me. Looking back on how many events have happened this year, has me shocked.
Hits :
But that took me away from finance proper, and pushed me into trying to do well academically and try and get all the certifications and papers I can. got me searching for boxes and chasing behind brandnames etc. In that time finance had changed quite a lot, and everybody started avoiding traditional finance like plague, if they could help it. This year I finally said screw it, if Covid can’t course correct me, nothing will and I decided to become a full timer in the field that I have also loved and invested most time at.
I Loved tracking the markets this year, this entire COVID actually. It makes me feel a certain way as to how resilient the markets have gone before my eyes growing up. Things that happened once a year that had markets screaming doomsday and calling for the end times. 50 of such things happened in both of these years, and no gave a flying anything about it. For how long this bulletproof behaviour can work, I do not know, but I’ll sit by with popcorn for as long as it does.
I have started sharing and participating in communities. And I’m quite liking it tbh. I have always been quite reserved with sharing information. Even the communities I am a part of, I usually just take lurk there, and take from others. Thinking that if they are smart, they already know it, if they aren’t, well… then they don’t need it. I’ve realized this is not the way to go, learning is the only that grows when given away and one must not make assumptions that the other person would not find what you have to share. I came across a quote that made me start thinking differently about it " Your obvious can be someone else’s gamechanging, and what is obvious now to you, was once special to you"
Misses :
Misses is my middle name, if I were to list it would be October 2022.
Although one thing I really missed out on was that I read too little compared to the other years. From a book a week guy, I am down to a book a month. It might feel a good cop-out to say, so many things are changing, so many new incidences happening that it’s okay to read less, I’ve already read a lot. But that’s the wrong way to see, things will never stop happening, life will never be less frantic, entropy only increases ahead. By that logic, I would have to stop my readings and learnings. So yeah, I need to read much more, especially about topics I have avoided until now due to it being dry or too math-y, abstract, tech-based, etc.
Hits - Boost up trading lot count from 9 to 15. Also I taught how to use my trading system to few of my close mates. They are also trading and making money. This shows that trading successfully is not an inate skill but something that can be acquired.
Miss - Yet another year goes by where am not switching to full time trading for a living.