I bought my first microcap stock at the end of 2021. I had no background in finance or investing, so I spent 2021 and 2022 learning the basics — mainly accounting.

By mid-2023, I started taking investing more seriously and began to understand what moves stocks and how to find ideas. That year I also laid the foundation for my investment style and had my first winners, like Deufol and later $cph.to.

In 2024, I leaned further into that, dedicating most of my time to generating ideas. And it bore fruit. I had my most successful year with multiple winners. By that point I felt confident in searching, identifying, and analyzing interesting setups. Most skills around “what to buy” were starting to click.

But 2025 taught me a valuable lesson. Knowing what to buy next doesn’t make you a good investor. What matters is how much you earn when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.

That year I learned — painfully — the importance of portfolio construction and how emotions interfere with it.

By the end of the year though, I had learned the most valuable lessons that books can’t teach. You have to experience them.

I’m sure this year I’ll continue to make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. But I feel much better prepared as an investor now than I was in 2024, even if I was an equally good (or bad) analyst back then.

The reason I’m writing this: don’t compare yourself to other investors. Everyone has their own timeline, and it takes years to learn just the basics (at least it did for me).

And you’ll never be “complete” as an

investor. The most complete you can be is good at managing your current sum of money because once that changes, you’ll need to develop new skills and adapt all over again.