Ramit Sethi recounts a personal anecdote from around 1999–2000: when he was in high school he invested a scholarship check in individual stocks, lost about half the money, and learned to stop trying to time the market. The episode motivated him to learn investing properly and adopt automatic diversification instead of buying individual stocks.
I'm speaking from experience. When I was in high school and I won a scholarship, I immediately took that check and I invested it in the stock market. That's what I thought Everybody does around 1999, 2000. Well, I ended up losing half that money, and it was a big wake up call. That taught me I'm not as smart as I think and maybe I should not be buying individual stocks. I decided to learn how investing actually worked. And the best thing I learned was to stop trying to time the market and buy individual stocks and to diversify automatically.
