Documenting my first decade of investing

I am a post-80s, not even considered a small-town exam taker. After graduating from college, I coincidentally entered the IT industry. Looking back, the IT industry is truly the first choice for ordinary families. Currently, I am probably a marginal figure in my company, maybe being phased out someday.
In 2015, with the booming stock market, I opened an account after the craze for stock trading. I’ve been fluctuating in the stock market for exactly ten years. In real life, I don’t have any particularly close friends to share or discuss investments with. So I just want to reflect on what I’ve experienced over these ten years on Jisilu.
The first phase is from 2015 to 2017. During this period, my salary was only a few thousand yuan. I invested about 30,000 or 50,000 yuan in stocks, mainly buying and selling based on K-line charts. I also looked at various news on Tonghuashun, not even paying attention to basic PE and PB ratios at first, just trading blindly for a while before buying a book on K-line trading and finally understanding. The most memorable moment was buying a ticket for Suning, not long after Alibaba invested in each other, leading to three consecutive limit-ups. It was just profit and loss, and everyone knew the stock market crash was coming. Stocks hitting limit-up and limit-down the next day, the market halting trading for half an hour, ending in a day. It was quite an eye-opener. At that time, I hadn’t yet come into contact with Jisilu or kept a record of my trades, so I definitely lost money and exited.
The second phase is from 2018 to 2020. During this time, I changed to a pharmaceutical company through a friend’s introduction to support IT informatization. My income slightly increased, and my work became much easier. Most colleagues spent their free time playing games. I once thought I could retire from this company. But then some things happened, which hurt me deeply, and I was forced to leave. By chance, I started using Jisilu again—honestly, I don’t remember where I first heard about this site. During this period, I read many investment-related books in my spare time at work, such as The Intelligent Investor, various Buffett books, value analysis, and How to Read Financial Statements. Most of the books on my home bookshelf are from this period. I began to understand investment, truly decided to treat it as a second career, and I am very grateful that this company gave me so much time to think and learn.
During this period, I learned about company valuation, analyzing financial reports, and expanded my horizons beyond stocks to include funds, LOFs, structured funds, and convertible bonds. But most of my understanding was superficial—I could only say I knew a bit more than the average person. Around 2017-2018, local housing prices started to surge wildly. With my parents’ support, I bought a small investment property. At that time, I decided to keep 200,000 yuan from the down payment as investment capital. Balancing mortgage payments and using part of the original property funds for investment was somewhat stressful. My investments during this phase mainly involved buying undervalued companies based on my own company valuation and copying the strategies of big players on Jisilu. The market in 2018 was poor, and I lost some money. In 2019 and 2020, the market improved, and I made some gains, but I didn’t beat the market. At least I started making money. Gradually, I increased my principal to about 500,000 yuan by the end of 2020. The most memorable moments were the full takeover bid for Yinglite, which hit several limit-downs, and I was envious of the various high-growth stocks. I still held my bank stocks, low PE, high dividend stocks, and some convertible bonds, quietly eating some losses. At least my investments started making money, even if only a little. That was something to be happy about.
The third phase is from 2021 to 2025. After experiencing the relaxed environment of my previous company, the high-pressure work pace and investment fatigue made me physically and mentally exhausted. I changed jobs several times. In 2025, I joined my current company. I also realized that my career prospects are limited. If I leave this company again, I probably won’t work again.
Regarding investments, my first decision was to sell my house. By 2021, Changzhou’s housing prices had risen for several years and started to stagnate. With a mortgage interest rate of 5.6% and an additional 5% cost of capital, making money on property would require annual appreciation of over 10%. Many friends around me hadn’t had salary increases for years, and I was lucky enough to sell after half a year. When I think about this, I remember sharing my thoughts with a friend, who strongly agreed. But he then bought a house in Zhenjiang, thinking it was cheap and still had room to grow. Now it’s 2026, and the results speak for themselves. Investment is really hard to persuade others about. Since then, I rarely share my investment experiences with friends.
My second decision was to split my investment funds into multiple strategies. Thanks to Teacher Kongmanzi’s inspiration—I’m the kind of person who can’t sleep well if a single stock’s position gets too large, even though my capital isn’t big, maybe my psychological resilience isn’t enough. Haha. Due to my limited investing talent, I judge some positions myself and copy others’ strategies. I’ve followed Lingda’s dual-low strategy, F’s bank rotation, Teacher Kongmanzi’s Yajin Technology, Tang’s Tencent, Yanghe, and various takeover arbitrages. Thanks to all the teachers and the selfless sharing spirit on Jisilu.
My investment allocations include undervalued high-dividend stocks (for IPOs) 20%, value investing (buying undervalued stocks) 30%, convertible bond rotation 20%, takeover arbitrage 20%, and short-term speculation 10%. The main approach is to reduce positions when a strategy’s valuation is high and increase when it’s low. I sold all my convertible bonds when the median was around 135, and I envy those who still hold positions. Currently, my position is at 70%. The funds from convertible bonds haven’t found a place to go, and the market level isn’t low either.
Looking back at my trading records, the most profitable was copying Tang’s strategy on Tencent, starting from over 400 and gradually buying down to around 200. I sold around 450, but looking back, it was a terrible move—sold at the halfway point. The second was copying Shao Tao’s trades, like Datang Power and Anhui Energy. The third was Teacher Kong’s Yajin Technology. The other profitable trades mainly involved convertible bonds, which shows my stock trading skills are really poor. I found that Zhengzhou Coal Machinery had a high return, and I think the only way I can ensure making money is that if I lose, I don’t lose much.
The undervalued high-dividend (for IPOs) strategy has yielded about 10% over several years; value investing (buying undervalued stocks) is really hard to estimate—hard to know when to sell; convertible bond rotation is the simplest, based on a few parameters (size, dual-low, premium rate), rotating blindly could give an annualized return of 20%. But now valuations are too high, so I dare not rotate anymore. The most important thing in takeover arbitrage is assessing the success probability and potential gains, and the maximum loss if it fails. I’ve been doing okay in recent years. Short-term speculation is just to satisfy my itch—no real gains.
That’s about all I have to share. My writing isn’t great, so please bear with me. I’ve lost the early records of my fund performance; I only started keeping complete records from 2018. I feel there’s still so much I want to pursue, but life’s various constraints prevent me from truly enjoying life peacefully. I look forward to the next ten years, by then I hope I’ve completed my initial capital accumulation and can enjoy life happily.