My first foray into the world of the stock market was very similar. My 10K initial investment turned into less than 5k in a matter of a few months as I tried an

My first foray into the world of the stock market was very similar. My 10K initial investment turned into less than 5k in a matter of a few months as I tried and failed to pick earnings winners and time the market. Lesson learned. It was a costly lesson but definitely not something I could easily forget. Since then I've mostly been putting my money in cheap S&P 500 index funds and the only active trading I do is backed by cold-hard statistics through thoroughly backtested algorithms on Quantopian rather than my own ill-informed gut feelings. And with this more disciplined approach, I have long since made back those initial losses. So I guess in the end everything worked itself out.