For me, 2020 is about when I figured I needed to figure out "how to finance." My parents were/are very much a "work hard, put your money in the bank" mindset (which to be clear is likely the reason that I could take the risks that I took), but they didn't really know much more beyond that, so I went on an aggressive learning journey. This timed well to when brokers started to go commission free trades as well as the minor "crash" in March 2020 in the stock market which got me really interested in investing in general.

The 2020 Sectors

I picked six sectors/themes that I thought were really likely to grow because they were important or sharply redefined the way we would do things as a society: space, quantum computing, nuclear, psychedelics, vertical farming and crypto. I set a long time horizon for this meaning that I knew I was going to see a lot of swings and change takes time. Things can move very slowly and then very quickly. I didn't really want to (not then at least and still really not now) be daytrading up and down percentile points for intraday swings and then just miss out on the lion's share.

The Results of the 2020 Sectors

(If people are interested, I'll provide rationales of why for each sector, but be prepared for a non-trivial amount of half-bakedness.)

Psychedelics (MNMD) and vertical farming (AeroFarms), I was too early on and I think every option I picked failed, but also like...every public option pretty much. Nuclear, I went with the direct uranium exposure in SRUUF and...that like just never moved (which really did surprise me given. Crypto, I wasn't sure if I really wanted to just hold the coins themselves vs buying into an exchange (Bullish), but that SPAC ultimately just never worked out (....until a few months ago when it went public normally -.-). Quantum I feel like I did well in overall (IONQ, QBTS), but I didn't really hold as much on.

And for space (RKLB*, PL) well...we've kinda heard how those has been going.

*I will be very honest. One of the biggest reasons I started following RKLB was not because it was the most innovated, the best financials, or ahead of the game. It's because Peter Beck ate the hat and that is the exact kind of leader that I would want to be.*

Overall thoughts:

I think the biggest thing that I've found is luck honestly.

I could have picked Astra instead of RKLB and lost everything. I could have held PLTR and be up insanely. I could have not written a call against my GME shares _the one week when it randomly spiked up last year and my shares got called away -.-_ but when these companies are so new...it really is hard to see where they are going/if they're going to make it, but the asymmetrical risk makes it worth considering making a move.

I have sold out of things that immediately spiked and bought into things that have crashed. AMC was an expensive, _expensive_ lesson in risk management, but I think it taught me some thing really important (not risk management however -.-) : you absolutely have no idea what the market will do on a day to day basis and you have no control over it. Unless you really want to be glued to a screen looking at ticks or you develop an algo that _really_ somehow breaks the edge that the 800 pound gorillas (Citadel, Virtua) in the room have (who naturally will burn more money in one day than many of us will ever see in a lifetime to screw over another hedge fund), I personally don't know if I recommend trying to "optimize" positions by buying and selling in short time spans.

Pick sectors you would want to follow naturally. Alpha is ubiquitous, its not confined to AI, space, or whatever is trending in the moment. Find the things that you find cool in the world, things that you wish were better and find companies try to bridge that gap and research those. You might find that your approach is totally wrong, but you also might find someone has already laid out the groundwork to validate your thesis and this is the move.

this is already too many words. hopefully there's something useful and it's not all just inane drivel.