I Was Down 32% for Two Years. Here Is What Happened When I Stayed Invested

I Have Been Investing Since 2015. Here Is What 10 Years Taught Me

My first investing lesson did not come from a book or a YouTube video. It came from watching two very different piles of money do two very different things over the same four years.

In 2015, I was in my early 20s in India with a few lakh rupees saved up and a lot of overconfidence. I split that money in two directions without really thinking about it. Part of it went into speculative stocks I could barely explain, chasing tips and market noise the way most beginners do. The other part went into a couple of plain mutual funds that I set up and then mostly forgot about. Between 2015 and 2018, the speculative bets bled money consistently. The mutual funds I had ignored quietly returned somewhere between 40% and 50% over those years, enough that I actually used those gains to fund part of my master’s degree applications to the US. That contrast is the most important investing lesson I have ever learned, and it connects directly to the habits I later built around money.

Starting Over in the US

When I moved to the US for my master’s degree, investing moved to the back seat entirely. My first financial priority was a student loan carrying close to 10% interest. Clearing that first was not exciting, but guaranteed-return math is hard to argue with. Once that was done, I started investing again in 2021, smaller amounts, nothing very systematic yet.

January 2022 is when I started tracking everything properly in a structured spreadsheet, every contribution, the portfolio value each month, and the return percentage. Looking back, the amount felt small at the time. But there is no amount too small to start tracking. The habit of knowing your numbers matters far more than the size of the number itself, and if you are unsure how often to track your net worth, monthly is the right cadence. That spreadsheet is what powers the chart below. It also turned out to be one of the worst possible months to start tracking, because the market had its own plans almost immediately.

The Two Years That Tested Everything

Rates started rising, tech stocks corrected sharply, and the optimism of 2020 and 2021 evaporated fast. By September 2022, my portfolio was down 32.5%. I had put in roughly $72,000 at that point and my portfolio value was sitting at $48,763. That is a paper loss of over $23,000, which does not feel like a paper loss when you are staring at the number every month.

That period was genuinely hard. I remember seeing the spreadsheet in September 2022 and feeling the weight of it. My elder brother kept telling me markets go up and down and to stay the course, and honestly that helped more than any financial framework would have. I kept investing. Mostly VOO and QQQ, which made up roughly 60-70% of my portfolio in those early months, alongside some individual stocks where I took real losses.

What kept me going was the memory of those mutual funds in India. The money I had left alone had done better than everything I had actively touched. So I stayed consistent and kept adding every month, even when it felt pointless.

What December 2023 Actually Felt Like

From January 2022 through November 2023, my portfolio never once closed a month in positive territory. Every single month for nearly two years, I had put in more money than my portfolio was worth. December 2023 was the first month I crossed break-even, and I want to be honest about what that felt like. It was not exciting in the way you might expect. I had not made any money. I had gone from -32% back to zero. But that recovery, from the worst point to break-even, was the real victory. It proved the strategy was working even when the results were invisible.

Once momentum returned through 2024, things moved quickly. Returns crossed double digits by mid-2024. By November 2025 the portfolio had crossed 50%. December 2025 closed at 51.9% total return on invested capital, starting from a moment when I was down nearly a third of everything I had put in.

What This Portfolio Actually Is

One important thing to say clearly: this is one of my two larger actively managed portfolios, and it is the one where I take more risk. Around 50% of this portfolio sits in individual stocks. I do occasional swing trades. I spend real time reading earnings reports and studying businesses because I find markets genuinely interesting, not because I have to. That curiosity is what makes active management worthwhile for me personally, and it is also what makes it sustainable when things go wrong.

This is not a portfolio I would recommend copying if you are not equally interested in doing the research. The risk is real. The losses on individual stocks are real. And the returns, while strong, come with stress and time that most people would reasonably prefer to spend elsewhere.

The Honest Case for Index Funds

Here is the most direct thing I can say after 10 years of investing across two countries: index funds beat most active managers over time. That includes me in several of those years. If you had taken my exact cash flows, every dollar I invested on the exact same dates, and put it all into VOO instead, your return would be within 1 percentage point of mine. One percentage point, for zero research, zero stress, and zero time spent reading earnings reports.

If you are early in your investment journey, the answer is simple. Pick VOO for the S&P 500 or VTI for the total US market, set up an automatic monthly contribution, and do not touch it. Keeping money in safe but low-return instruments is one of the most common and costly mistakes I see people make when they are just starting out. The account you stop watching is usually the account that performs best. My mutual funds from 2015 proved that to me. My own spreadsheet confirms it again now.

Active investing is only worth the effort if you are genuinely fascinated by markets, willing to do real research, and comfortable sitting with losses on individual bets. If that does not describe you, the money traps that keep people from financial freedom almost always include overcomplicating something that works best when kept simple.

What I Am Still Learning

Ten years in, I still make mistakes and I still learn something new every year. April 2025 was a reminder of that. Returns dropped back to nearly 1.5% in a single month as markets corrected sharply, and everything built since late 2024 looked like it had vanished overnight. I stayed invested. By November 2025 the portfolio was at its highest point. That pattern is familiar now, but it still tests your patience every single time it happens.

The real skill in investing is not picking the right stock. It is learning how to stay calm when a significant amount of your money is going down and you have no idea when it will stop. That emotional discipline, the kind that financial freedom on a work visa demands of you anyway, is the only edge that actually compounds over time.

If you are just getting started, open a brokerage account this week and put your first contribution into a broad index ETF. Not next month. This week. Starting in January 2022, one of the worst entry points of the last decade, still produced a 51.9% return by December 2025 through nothing more than consistent investing. There is no perfect time to start. There is only starting.

Drop a comment below and tell me where you are in your investing timeline. I read every one. And if you want to follow along as I share more real numbers from my portfolio, subscribe so you do not miss the next post.