How to invest wisely as an Indie Hacker

Everyone is a genius in a bull market - Mark Cuban

The latest stock and crypto market crash serves as great humble juice for FOMO investors, including myself.

Most Indie Hackers I know dream of freedom. We want to work on what we love, whenever we feel like it - and do other things we love for the rest of the time. To be indie is to be free. A large part of attaining that dream, is investing.

Albeit as a developer, working in asset management has exposed me to people who know way more than me about investing; and so, I thought I would share some specific insights to protect yourself as an Indie investor.

Understand your bias

Around 10-15% of my investment portfolio is in crypto and individually picked stocks. If you had a look at my portfolio, you'd notice that it's heavily biased towards tech stocks. Naturally, these are companies I naturally respect and am exposed to as a developer. Yet, this doesn't mean they're good investments.

I call this 10-15% of my portfolio FOMO investing. I have no idea of the fundamentals. These are all biased and emotional investments. The market crash has shown me that. Luckily, I entrusted the rest of my portfolio to people who knew what they were doing, or to passive index trackers.

When investing, it's important to know when you're making under-researched biased decisions. Don't put all of your eggs in an unwoven basket.

Know what you don't know

Everyone is a genius in a bull market. Your financial future is more important than your current ego. Never let your ego get in the way of your growth.

Investing is the art of predicting the future. No one can really say what will happen in the future; but it's easier to understand that a business that's been generating sustainable profit for the past 5 years is likely to generate profit in the following year - unless something drastic happens.

There are people who are experts at understanding these patterns; or alternatively, indices that do well to include performing companies.

Stock picking has a terrible track record, don't assume that you'll be the rockstar that beats the stats. Stay humble.

Hey 👋 , I'm Wisani, the founder of Simfolio, an app to help you see your future net worth. Who doesn't want to know for sure when they'll become a multimillionaire?

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simfolio.app
Apple app: https://apps.apple.com/za/app/simfolio/id1559748715