So I had my first foray with the stock market back in april-may '20 when the Corona crash happened all over the globe. I knew I would have steady income during the entire pandemic from the start as I'm basically a glorified government employee (I'm in education) and I had some leftover savings that I could purpose however I wanted, and seeing how I wouldn't likely be traveling for the time being, I decided to look into stocks.
Now going in I had two basic things in mind: (1) if what comes down has obvious market value, it will go back up eventually. (2) the root cause of the Corona crash was not actual economic malaise, but rather anticipatory panic.
As I was doing research I caught sight of this small company doing gene sequencing (basically mapping out genes in order to identify causes of certain illnesses) called Pacific Biosciences. During the first months of the pandemic their stock was valued between $3-4. A nice price for a smaller company with obvious long term potential, I thought. So I bought a relatively sizeable stake in the company (I mean relative to my entire portfolio).
Then madness ensued. In a good way.
As 2020 closed, the stock started to rise in value. From 3-4 dollars to 8, 9, 13. I put some more money into it up until it hit 20 in december. Then, as the new year was starting up, it hit 30, 40, 50.
I basically just turned my annual holiday payout and some spare change into a small fortune.
As the stock hit $40 I started getting nervous and placed orders to dump the lot as it hit $35. I increased this to $40 as it peaked over that, and $45 as it hit $50. People on Yahoo boards were yelling 'onwards to $60' and even though it felt like I was dreaming, it was a lot more like sleep paralysis than a nice floaty cloud dream. I had to actively stop looking at the stock value real time in order to have any peace of mind at day. I'd wake up at 8, work from 9-16, then get on Yahoo to watch my stocks from 16 'til close.
So I started detoxing myself. A couple of days later I got a message saying my position had been sold. I now have a little over a year's wages in the bank. Which is absolutely awesome. This is life-changing money as it is.
The thing is though – it's just sitting there. Real estate is not an option even with this money as I don't meet the monthly income requirements for pretty much any type of mortgage and it's not enough by far to just straight up buy a house. I never got around to rebuying any sort of stocks when my position in PACB got sold. The interest on my savings account is negative at the moment, and it's a large enough sum to have to pay taxes over, so I now have this small fortune sitting in the bank that's just bleeding out, and I don't really know what to do with. I got so incredibly lucky on literally my first run – granted, I had some other stocks but as I saw PACB was exploding I just put everything in there, like an absolute dipshit – and I am so extremely aware that I will never ever see this success again, that I'm literally afraid to do anything with this money but just keep it where it is.
How do I deal with THIS? How do I deal with the idea that whatever I do, I'm not going to peak like that, that it's far more likely I'll just lose my money? Because in my current situation, I actually AM just losing my money.
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