Today is the day when I decide to put my goals down for the next year every year from now on.
Last year’s review:
Looking back on 2025, I had quite some achievements, but also had an unfortunate winter.
- I landed a good algo trading internship at an investment bank, and got my return offer
- I landed a good program to try for a trading role at a top prop firm, which I will attend in March 2026
- I completed my Masters degree with first class (I am very happy with myself, given that I have actually spent quite little effort on this, and a lot on internship / poker / having fun with friends!)
Areas I am not happy with myself:
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Trading I started trading CFDs on Trading 212 in April 2025, which is legitimate since I wanted to get a feel of the market before starting my internship. I quickly tasted my first loss with the Trump tariffs. After putting only £300 in and losing all of it, I switched to stable investments. The market’s bull run from June to October gave some good PnL, but I fomo-traded on gold, especially seeing my friends who bought a lot of gold CFDs back in July at around 3200, and saw it rise to 4000+, I added a lot of positions in gold CFDs at 4100 and 4200, but witnessed its biggest one-day fall since 2020. I holded on to my positions, hoping it could bounce back, but it did not (despite paying massive interests to keep the positions open). I finally gave up in December, as I wanted to focus on my ski trip in Europe (Dolomites and Zell-am-See). Unfortunatly gold quickly acvhieved new high, and I FOMOed again as soon as I was back from my trip. I also FOMOed on silver, seeing it quickly went to 120 and crashed to 100 becasue of market rumour on Welsh being more hawkish, I thought the market is over-panicking, and added more positions on silver. Apparently silver was a product that was offered too much leverage, and it went from 120 down to 80 in 24 hours. I was playing poker with my friends while my portfolio witnessed the steepest single-day percentage decline of silver since March 1980 and I lost about a month of salary (post-tax) in 2 hours. I lost 2 buy-ins on poker on that same day!. From then on I kept adding more positions into both gold, silver and Nasdaq-100 hoping for a quick bounce back to make up for some losses, but in the following 2 weeks, no bounce back happened. I finally gave up on trading in Febuary 2026, and swallowed a 50% loss overall.
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Poker Winter 25-26 was a bad season for me financially. Despite studying GTO and watching a lot of poker videos, I have almost never won against 2 of my loose-aggressive friends, who play in a pretty random style. I was still up in the casino until then, but there were really just 2 hands. One hand was when I had KK and 3 betted, someone called with T4 and had 2 pairs on a pretty dry board. I couldn’t do much but to call all-in at the river. The other time was I had QQ and 3 betted, someone called with JJ, and raised me all-in on a very dry board. I called, but he hit another J on the river. If we remove these 2 hands from the 21 buy-ins I have played, I would still be up overall. But I seem to have no luck throughout the season.
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relationship Not the best either. I broke up with my girlfriend who I have dated for the past 3.5 years. I have never really liked my parents, and she has been the person I share everything with and been through every major college life moment with, and is really like a family to me. But life is life, I have to do my best to move on!
This year’s goals:
- Focus on stable investments. Make sure 60% of portfolio is in S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100.
- Work on my poker play, bring overall PnL to positive
- Post blogs here at least once per month
- Exercise regularly, keep weight below 68kg.
- Play football or basketball at least twice per month.
