{"id":8154,"date":"2022-06-10T16:55:01","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T21:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=8154"},"modified":"2022-06-19T14:48:27","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T19:48:27","slug":"i-followed-my-millionaire-brothers-investing-strategy-to-big-gains-now-that-the-markets-down-im-pouring-in-even-more-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=8154","title":{"rendered":"I followed my millionaire brother&#8217;s investing strategy to big gains. Now that the market&#8217;s down, I&#8217;m pouring in even more cash."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><li>I was always nervous about investing in the stock market, so I stuck to &#8220;safe&#8221; bets, like CDs.<\/li><li>But watching my brother become a millionaire changed my mind, so I followed his strategy.<\/li><li>I&#8217;ve watched my money grow, and I know the market always rises. That&#8217;s why I won&#8217;t stop investing now.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve never been one to get involved in the stock market. Coming of age in 2008 \u2014 as the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/what-caused-the-great-recession\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Great Recession<\/a>&nbsp;tanked housing prices and jobs evaporated \u2014 has always made me a low-risk investor. At first, that meant I locked my money away in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/who-has-the-best-cd-rates-right-now\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CDs<\/a>&nbsp;and low-interest savings accounts.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I got older, however, I began to understand that such investment vehicles, while safe, were ultimately losing me money. So instead I turned to real estate. And while that has served me well throughout the years, a sour experience with a tenant left me looking for an alternative place to put my funds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>I followed my brother into the stock market<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Last year I&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/money-rules-reach-million-dollar-net-worth-2021-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote an article for Insider<\/a>&nbsp;about my millionaire brother, a college dropout whose wise investing strategies have made him a literal fortune. The money doesn&#8217;t lie. So I began to invest, too. Haltingly, at first, just a few hundred dollars whenever I had spare money lying around. I also followed everything my brother had done since I already knew it had worked for him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in 2021, my profits grew. Seeing them \u2014 and the speed at which they rose \u2014 was a powerful lesson in the way the stock market works. I wish I had started this before my 30s;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/what-is-compound-interest\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">compound interest<\/a>&nbsp;is a magical thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m still risk-averse, which means that most of my money lies in a variety of funds. The intention of funds like these is to diversify your portfolio so that any individual loss doesn&#8217;t impact you too heavily. Although I&#8217;ve dabbled here and there with some individual stocks, I don&#8217;t want to lose everything in the event of a collapse (as occurred with my single&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/how-to-use-netflix-tips-and-tricks\">Netflix<\/a>&nbsp;stock).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>As the market has slumped, I&#8217;ve continued investing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It probably sounds odd, then, that as the stock market has declined steadily throughout 2022, I&#8217;ve continued to buy more. Gone are any profits I&#8217;ve ever earned; instead, I am down more than $4,000 overall. I would have lost less by keeping my money in my checking account.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as my investment portfolio grows, so too does my knowledge about how this whole thing works. And the No. 1 lesson I&#8217;ve learned? It&#8217;s not about timing the market, it&#8217;s about time&nbsp;<em>in<\/em>&nbsp;the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I missed out on investing in my 20s, which is a bummer, but I&#8217;m still young, (relatively) healthy, and I have no immediate need for these funds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Historically speaking,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrotrends.net\/2526\/sp-500-historical-annual-returns\">the market has always risen<\/a>. So while I may not break even on this year&#8217;s investments, and I probably won&#8217;t see anything like a return in 2023, I can stand to wait for 10, 15, or even 20 years before needing to sell.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because the market has dropped so heavily, I can afford to buy more of everything. And yes, I&#8217;m still losing incrementally on a daily basis, but the way I see it, everything is on sale. It may be down 30% since the beginning of the year, but it won&#8217;t stay that way forever.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m putting in as much as I can now, out of all times, to invest. While others are panicking and selling, or opting for less risky investment strategies, I&#8217;m going in on the stock market. And&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrotrends.net\/2526\/sp-500-historical-annual-returns\">data supports my decision<\/a>: Although it took four years for the market as a whole to recover from the 2008&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/what-is-a-recession\">recession<\/a>, it met \u2014 and surpassed \u2014 its previous value.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>What my experience has taught me<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t claim to know everything about the stock market, but I have picked up a few things since starting all of this. My advice to people like me is this: The stock market doesn&#8217;t have to be scary. There is always some level of risk, but such is the case when you&#8217;re trying to turn some money into more money.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/what-is-an-index-fund\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Index funds<\/a>&nbsp;are generally more stable than individual stocks so you won&#8217;t feel the impact as much when the market dips. And&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/dollar-cost-averaging\">dollar-cost averaging<\/a>, where you make smaller, more regular investments rather than dropping a single lump sum all at once, is a tried-and-true strategy that reduces the impact of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/personal-finance\/what-is-volatility\">volatility<\/a>. Finally, do this as early as you can. The younger, the better.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Am I a little nervous about dropping money into a declining market? Of course I am; I don&#8217;t love seeing my hard-earned cash disappear into the ether. However, I&#8217;m finally educated enough to know that this, too, shall pass. And when it does, I&#8217;m primed for a big win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was always nervous about investing in the stock market, so I stuck to &#8220;safe&#8221; bets, like CDs. But watching<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[254,3421,3422],"tags":[888,3425],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8154"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8155,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8154\/revisions\/8155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}