How do you restrict the urge to pick stocks?
When I first started investing 5 years ago, I took big losses and finally pivoted to index funds in 2021 at the top and I held through the bear market in 2022. I was extremely patient and saw astonishing results this past year. However I decided to chase gains and liquidated most of index funds to play options and short term swing trades. After consistently winning, it took one bad loss to set me off on a string of revenge trading and now I have lost all of my 2023-2024 gains.
I'm going to pivot back to index funds but there is always that urge to return back to riskier trading because it always seems like my mistakes could be mitigated in hindsight:
In 2019/2020, I sold all of my long positions right before the market crashed and then inversed the market which quickly led to steep losses. Almost all of my stocks I picked ended up 5x in price and one even peaked at 15x entry price by 2021. If I had more experience and learned to hold my hand during fearful times I would have multiplied my account many times over.
this year, I had strong successes playing short term options but I continued to burn myself on 1dte plays. Many of the alternate plays I considered ended up being huge winners. Something keeps telling me that I only need to change things up slightly and that "next time will be different." I logically know that that's not how it works. I come from a fairly strong mathematical, economic, and statistical background yet something in the back of my head keeps trying to convince me to jump back in.
How do you guys stay so consistent to your theses?