My Stock Investing Story: How I Lost 3x My Profits

There's a version of this post where I open with a screenshot of a 120% return and a triumphant "look what I built!" That's not this post. This is the one where I tell you the truth: my account is empty right now, and it took losing three times my profits to finally understand why. If you're heading into a new year telling yourself "this is the year I finally get serious about investing" — I was you, three years ago. Here's what actually happened.

It started with a second baby, not a strategy

My investing story doesn't begin with a trading app or a hot tip. It begins in December 2021, the day I met the second treasure of my life.With two kids to raise, my husband and I made a decision most people around us thought was a little crazy: we'd both take parental leave at the same time. Which meant, almost overnight, our time and our income both got a lot tighter.

I needed to figure something out — fast. And somewhere in those sleepless months, that need turned into something bigger. Thinking about my kids' future made me want to take my present more seriously. So I started reading. Real estate, land, every investment book I could get my hands on — and for the first time, none of it felt like homework. It felt urgent, and honestly, kind of fun.About a year in, after circling every option, I landed on U.S. stocks. Beginner's luck was real: I studied what I could from books and YouTube, applied it carefully, collected a little year-end dividend, and didn't lose much of anything. I felt like I'd cracked the code.

Then I touched Korean stocks — and things got weird

I can’t fully explain what happened next, except to say it felt almost personal. Like someone was watching my account. Every time I finally gave in and sold something after holding too long, it would climb right after. Every time I thought I’d bought at the bottom, the floor kept dropping — basement after basement.

It messed with my head. But strangely, I couldn’t walk away either.

I was sitting in exactly that low point — a little defeated, honestly — when my husband handed me a pair of earphones while I was folding laundry. He said he’d found a trader whose style matched my personality, and just asked me to give it a listen.

I wasn’t thrilled. He’d recommended things before that turned into wasted hours and nothing learned, and I was tired — the last thing I wanted was more homework.

The video that changed how I listened

But the more I listened, the more I noticed something different: this person actually meant it. Not the usual performance — the why-would-you-even-explain-this-much kind of honest.

One day on my commute home, I put on a video where he talked about why he still made YouTube content even though his trading was already going well. And something clicked. Early 30s, single, three-ish years into trading — on paper, none of it should have added up to credibility. But conviction has a way of cutting through that.

I’d always believed that whatever you do, you need your own philosophy behind it. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten that. That was the real mistake — not any single trade.

I should have built my own principles first, through my own study. Instead, I leaned on someone further down the road than me, and that steady guidance genuinely helped. What hurt me was chasing fast wins without ever building the foundation underneath them.

So what actually happened to my account?

Whether it was beginner’s luck or just following instructions closely, almost everything I touched in the beginning turned a profit. And then — right where human greed and overconfidence cross paths — I gave three times those profits back.

So today, I’ve stepped away from active trading. I’m rebuilding, slowly, trying to find that middle ground I lost somewhere along the way.

My account is empty right now. I wanted to write this post waving a 120% return in your face. Instead, I’m writing it looking backward — studying risk management, building a strategy for not losing, and working toward principles that are actually mine, not borrowed from someone else’s conviction.

If you’re starting this year with your own version of “I’ll finally get serious about money” — I hope my three years save you a little time, or at least a little heartbreak. The market doesn’t care about our resolutions. But the principles we build this year? Those, we get to keep.

There are no mistakes

Only lessons you haven't finished learning yet

If there's one thing I want you to take from this post more than any specific trading tip, it's this: I don't actually believe I made a mistake. Not in the way we usually use that word, like something to be ashamed of and buried. I've come to believe life doesn't really deal in mistakes. It deals in lessons — and the same lesson has a way of showing up again and again, in slightly different clothes, until you've actually learned it. The Korean stock account that kept finding new basements wasn't punishing me.

It was repeating a lesson about patience and conviction that I hadn't fully absorbed the first three times it came around, gently, in smaller forms. The three-times loss wasn't a verdict on my worth as an investor, or as a mother trying to build something for her family. It was simply the lesson finally getting loud enough that I couldn't ignore it anymore.

[Image Credits] All photos are personally taken unless otherwise noted

That reframe changes everything about how I look at that empty account now. It's not a scoreboard telling me I failed. It's a receipt — proof that I showed up, tried, got it wrong in specific, nameable ways, and am now walking away with information I didn't have three years ago. Growth was never going to happen through the trades that went right. It was always going to come from sitting with the ones that went wrong, long enough to actually understand why. I think about my kids a lot when I think about this. I don't want them to grow up afraid of getting things wrong, chasing only the safe, sure bets. I want them to see that their mother tried something hard, lost real money doing it, and kept going anyway — not recklessly, but thoughtfully, building something more durable out of the wreckage. That feels like a better inheritance than a clean track record ever could.

Tips: What I’m Carrying Forward From This

If you’re staring at your own version of an empty account right now, here’s what I’d actually tell you — not as trading advice, but as the specific, nameable things I’m doing differently this time.

Write your exit before you write your excitement. Every trade that hurt me was one I entered with a plan for the upside and no plan for the downside. Now I decide where I’m getting out before I decide to get in — while I’m still calm enough to mean it.
Ask whose conviction you’re actually borrowing. A lot of my worst decisions weren’t really mine — they were someone else’s confidence, wearing my account number. This year, I’m only holding positions I can explain in my own words, for my own reasons.
Let the lesson repeat until you actually hear it. If the same mistake keeps showing up in different clothes — impatience, chasing, ignoring your own rules — that’s not bad luck. That’s the lesson getting louder. Write down what it’s trying to tell you before it has to shout again.
Keep a receipt, not a scoreboard. I stopped tracking this account as a win/loss record and started treating it as documentation — what I believed, what actually happened, what I’d do differently. That shift alone made it possible to look at the number without flinching.
Decide what you want your kids to see, not just what you want to earn. My goal this year isn’t a clean track record. It’s showing my kids what it looks like to try something hard, get it wrong in the open, and keep building anyway.

The market doesn’t owe any of us a comeback story. But the principles we build while we’re down here — those are ours to keep, no matter what the account balance says next December.