How I grew my capital from 30k to 3 million in 10 years from Bursa Malaysia

While many like to share how success they are, I would like to start my sharing with my worst experience in my 10 years investment journey. I started my investment life (actually it was a trading life) in 2007 during the market peak just before the crisis 2008.

I was born from a poor family and grew up from a small village and I know nothing about stock until I graduated from university and found my first job.

My first job was a software engineer and my manager was a very successfully business man. He is the man who opened my eye to stock trading world. It was a fantastic experience at the beginning and he claimed that we made more than 1 million from stock trading when he was studying in university. When the time he became my manager, he was a very successfully investor and business man.

I followed his guideline and start trading in Bursa Malaysia in 2007. The market was so active and hot during that time and we could see there are few counters jump more than 10% almost every day. Indeed, it was really fun.

I started my stock trading with just 15k and this was basically all the money I had and the money in my saving account was just nice enough to cover my life expenses. In Chinese word, I “sai lang” all my money into stock market. This wasn’t the worst part, I love my family very much and I thought I was very smart and found the key to success in stock market. Therefore, I asked my family to join me and borrowed another 15k from my father so my capital increased to 30k during the peak.

The tragedy started when the market crash in 2008. My major holding was Parkson during the crisis and my entry price was about RM8. I cut all my holding around RM4 and I suffered for 50% loss.

(Note: The stock price above was adjusted by dividend and other entitlement news.)

Source: http://www.malaysiastock.biz/Stock-Chart.aspx?securitycode=5657

What happened after the crisis?

1. My family’s capital that invested to me suffered for 50% loss.
2. My own capital 30k (my own money 15k plus the 15k I borrowed from my dad) suffered for 50% loss.

I have absolutely no idea how should I face and explain this to my family during the tragedy. No one will listen to you when you lose 50% of people’s hard earn money. During this bad day, only 2 persons who never blame me and still supporting me until now and they are my mother and my girl friend (now she has become my wife).

Lesson learned:

1. I will never help other to invest again except for my parent as I still wish I can help them to grow their money.
2. Cut loss is very important.
3. Never borrow money to invest.
4. One should start and learn the stock investment with small capital as it is most likely you will burn your money before you can earn money from stock investment.

When I looked back now, I am glad that I started with a small capital and I’m happy that I am still survivingJ.

Stayed tune for my next chapter – how I recovered all my losses.

Check out my blog for update - http://www.malaysiastock.biz/Blog/Blogger.aspx?bid=1