If I could go back and undo one financial decision, it wouldn't be a bad stock pick or an expensive fund I shouldn't have bought. It would be what I did in the autumn of 2008.
I sold.
Not everything, but a big chunk. The markets were in freefall. Lehman Brothers had collapsed. Every headline screamed crisis, crash, depression. My portfolio was down 30%, then 40%, and every day seemed to bring fresh disaster. I convinced myself I was being prudent — preserving what was left before things got even worse.
Things did get worse. Then they got better. Then they went on to deliver one of the longest bull markets in history. And I watched most of it from the sidelines, too scared to get back in, waiting for a 'safer' moment that never felt safe enough.
If I had done absolutely nothing — if I had just kept my regular monthly investments going and ignored the noise — my portfolio today would be significantly larger. Not by a little. By a lot.
That mistake cost me more than any bad investment ever did. Not because I made a wrong call on a stock, but because I broke the one rule that actually matters: stay invested.
What I learned from that experience shapes everything I do now:
First, market crashes are normal. They happen roughly every 5-7 years on average. The 2008 crisis felt like the end of the world, but it wasn't. Neither was the dot-com bust in 2000, or the COVID crash in 2020. Each time, markets recovered and went on to new highs. The people who stayed invested and kept buying through the downturn came out far ahead.
Second, your emotions are your worst enemy as an investor. Fear and greed take turns driving you toward terrible decisions. Fear makes you sell at the bottom. Greed makes you buy at the top. The only reliable defence is a system that removes emotion from the equation entirely — a monthly auto-invest that buys the same amount regardless of what the market is doing.
Third, doing nothing is often the hardest and most underrated strategy. When markets are crashing and everyone around you is panicking, sitting still feels irresponsible. But it's usually the right move. Historically, markets have recovered from major downturns — though past recoveries don't guarantee the same in future. The long-term investor's edge is patience, not prediction.
I still have moments of doubt when markets wobble. The difference is, I now recognise that feeling for what it is — a normal human reaction, not useful information. The auto-invest carries on regardless. So should I.
If you're early in your investing journey and haven't experienced a significant market downturn yet: statistically, you probably will at some point. Markets have historically had corrections and crashes. When that happens, different people respond differently — and what's right for one person may not be right for another. For me, the lesson was that doing nothing (rather than panic-selling) turned out to be the right call for my circumstances. Whether that applies to you is something only you can judge.