There are still a lot of opportunities on my radar, some of which I have seriously missed.
It’s important to record your mistakes so you can avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
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Bad investing habits won’t fix themselves. With every new year, the market presents you with a new set of recurring opportunities.
That’s why, at the beginning of every year, I sit down and think about my worst missteps from the past year and figure out how to avoid them next time. Here are three mistakes I definitely don’t want to repeat in 2025. Please try to learn from my experience.
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my default method Bitcoin(Cryptocurrency: BTC) Is dollar cost averaging (DCA), which involves purchasing a fixed dollar amount on a regular basis, regardless of its price. It’s intentionally boring, and, at least when I sit back and let the automated purchases I set up do their job, it prevents any single purchase from carrying too much emotional weight, or disrupting my cost base too much. You can probably see where this is going.
In 2025, when the coin broke $120,000, I became impatient and made a massive, unplanned purchase, a level that had never been reached before. I told myself I was going to be decisive and leverage the large amount of unallocated capital I had on hand. In fact, I have fallen victim to cryptocurrency FOMO (fear of missing out) for the hundredth time, and this one was more damaging than (almost) any other. Of course, prices have come down a lot since that big purchase.
I’m not selling and don’t plan to sell because I still believe the long-term investment thesis is strong. But I let my position’s cost basis – the average price paid – get worse, and for no strategic reason. My new rule for 2026 is that if I want to purchase an asset faster than my current DCA plan plans, I will resize my recurring purchases within the prescribed time frame.
i have realized Zerocoin(Cryptocurrency: ZEC) Over the years. In 2025, I watched its story heat up without me being too lazy to actually do my own research before potentially buying. But in a fast-moving market like cryptocurrency, laziness is never free, and it charges latecomers through worse entry prices.
By early October 2025, Zcash had more than doubled in about a week as demand for the privacy coin surged. A month later, it briefly overtook its largest competitor, MoneroIt’s another sign that attention within the privacy space has turned in its favour, by market capitalization. It was only then that I panicked and did the necessary reading and thinking to decide if I wanted to have it.
Eventually, I bought some and started DCA, but quickly fell into the red.
I am still accumulating Zcash and I am not panicking about the timing of my first purchase in the long run as I am very confident in its long term position. But I still missed out on a lot of growth opportunities because I wasn’t paying attention when my brain first started reminding me that I might be able to make money with the token. Telling yourself “I’ll get around to looking into this later” is the decision to accept a premium to buy an asset if the investment thesis is correct.
My solution for 2026 is to think more explicitly about the cost of investing in later-stage assets when I find something on my radar that starts to look more interesting.
Will this save me from making the same mistake in 2025? Maybe not exactly, but it could be a step in the right direction.
In early April 2025, the panic surrounding new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration left me extremely disoriented and a little scared for my portfolio. In two days, about $5 trillion in value was wiped off the market as investors priced in what they then saw as rapidly rising risks of a recession. Then, on April 9, 2025, a 90-day suspension of tariffs was announced and the market soared.
This volatility triggers one of my worst habits, which is becoming inactive when things are volatile. I stopped adding one of my core positions SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(NYSE: SPY). I also put a hold on buying one of my favorite businesses, costco wholesalebecause I’m concerned that the stock looks expensive and vulnerable to tariff-driven profit destruction.
At least so far, tariffs haven’t made the sky fall. The market’s strong move up in 2025 caused me to miss out on some gains, while Costco’s stock tanked, causing me to miss the opportunity to add to my position.
Solution next time? Use unpredictable and anxiety-provoking market conditions as an opportunity to practice staying calm and consistently implementing strategies that I know work.
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Alex Carchidi holds positions in Bitcoin, Costco Wholesale, SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, and Zcash. The Motley Fool holds and recommends Bitcoin and Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool recommends Monero. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
3 Bad Investing Mistakes I Won’t Make Again in 2026 and Beyond Originally published by The Motley Fool
