MAKING BAD (INVESTMENT) DECISIONS IN A PANDEMIC

as a journalist who has won an award for consumer education, having written countless articles punting good financial sense on behalf of the experts I regularly interview, the exercise of looking back on my personal investment portfolio’s performance through the Covid-19 period in 2020 induces shame.

The thing is, I’ve worked for myself for the last two years and the pressure to manage a personal portfolio – which I constructed over and above my paid-up pension from my last period of formal employment and a few retirement annuities – increases exponentially when it’s your nest egg rather than a plaything made up of discretionary income.

I bought a textbook on investment management and tried to refine my valuation skills. I learned about portfolio construction, risk management and technical analysis. In some instances, I was lucky – I bought into