When that happens to you the most important thing is not to confuse luck for investment acumen!
I am under no such illusions with my crypto buying experiment.
As was made clear when I first published my foray into crypto just under a month ago, it was purely speculative on my part.
There was no specialist knowledge, just a new understanding of how a younger generation perceived the role of crypto currencies and a desire to learn by doing.
Since then, I have had a number of emails asking how the basket of crypto coins I purchased have performed.
I have to say it has been a wild ride.
Double digit daily swings in prices indicates the volatility attached to these types of investments. That may be great for the traders but it for the buy and hold person (like me) it suggests you really should only use worry free money to buy crypto with.
What is worry free money?
As the term suggests, it's money that you don't worry about and won't worry about no matter how it fluctuates. For some it may be a few hundred dollars, for others it might be much more than that.
My theory is that the minute you start to worry about any particular investment is the minute you have too much of it.
Anyway, I haven't worried about the crypto values except as an academic exercise which is made so simple with the Easy Crypto portfolio tracker.
I bought five different crypto coins. Since purchase, the portfolio has fluctuated from a total loss of 10% to a max profit of nearly 30%.
Thanks to a large fall overnight (nearly ten per cent of total value), the portfolio increase is now 19.2%. Not too shabby but entirely down to getting lucky.
The individual holdings have performed as follows:
As you may have guessed, I didn't purchase an equal amount of each crypto asset, instead reserving the largest purchase for the perceived strength of Bitcoin.
Looking at the above figures is when a novice investor usually rues not putting everything into Crypto 3 or 4 . Having been around investing long enough, I know that concentrated bets like that usually entail sleepless nights and unnecessary stress. I want neither of those things in my life.
As it is, it appears I got lucky in my first few weeks of having a punt on crypto.
The total value of my investment is still in the worry free money category so I am letting the entire amount roll along. We'll see how it performs with a new update next month.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
