Investing
What I have learned over more than a decade — a personal path, not advice.
I have been investing for more than a decade. This is a personal path: where I started, mistakes I made, and what I believe now.
My philosophy today is simple: diversification and a long horizon. Build your own strategy — and follow it, regardless of market swings. If the plan is a monthly purchase of a set amount, I buy every month instead of waiting for a “convenient moment.” There are exceptions: if the market dropped sharply on the purchase day, I can buy more or buy earlier — but that is fine-tuning, not abandoning the plan.
This is not advice. Every piece in this section carries a disclaimer.
The path by year
2013
First steps: trading
I started with forex and wave analysis — trading a small deposit, trying to work out a strategy of my own. It felt like a business: no suppliers, no clients, only a strategy and attention to the news. It turned out to be another job — only with constant tension over every open position. I realized this was not my path, and started looking for a way to make income passive rather than something that needed round-the-clock attention.
2015
Move to the stock market
I came to stocks, bonds, and funds with a long-term horizon. That same year I read “The Richest Man in Babylon” — from it I took the principle of setting aside a percentage of every income. In every business I tried to pay myself a fixed salary each month — and from that salary I set aside 5% for investing. Over time the portfolio moved almost entirely to ETFs — more convenient and more reliable than assembling positions by hand.
2017
Investing in two countries
After the first trip to the US it became clear: you can diversify not only the portfolio, but the country where you run a business. I put part of the capital from Russian businesses into a new American company — expanding not only investments, but the business itself across two countries. Looking back — especially given what happened later at home — I consider this one of the soundest decisions I made.
2021–2022
Loss and restart
In the summer of 2021, when we decided to stay in Florida, I still held an ETF portfolio with a Russian broker. When the war began in 2022, those assets were frozen — the balance accumulated over years went to zero at once. One of my mistakes: shortly before that I had moved almost all positions into foreign ETFs on different markets. If part of the portfolio had stayed in ordinary Russian stocks and bonds, they could have been sold — foreign ETFs were frozen completely. I managed to withdraw some of it, but with a loss of more than 60% on over-the-counter trades.
It is funny to remember: when I was just starting to invest in Russia, a friend asked — is this even safe? I said: yes, it is almost impossible to lose money here — unless a war starts. It sounded like a joke then. After 2022 the same friend reminded me of those words — and he was right that I had been right, only not about the thing I had wanted to be right about.
After that I started over — on the American stock market, from zero. The old accumulated balance was wiped out, but it is better to start again than not to start at all.
2024
Rebalance App
Technical knowledge helped here too: so I would not keep the portfolio by hand in Excel, I built myself a rebalancing app — with live prices and AI analysis. More on a separate page.