I thought I’d start a feel-good investing retro thread, where the idea would be for forum members to share the most memorable events from the very beginning of their investing careers, which happened at least over 10 years ago. So, not recent stories, but more retro stuff, e.g., from the 90s or early 2000s, when the investing environment was completely different. These could be quite useful and fun for the newest younger investors to read about what investing was like “back in the day”. For example, it’s been nice to listen to Aki Pyysing’s stories from the 90s about the Finnish stock exchange on various podcasts, so that’s perhaps the kind of thing I’m looking for here.
I’m not old enough yet to have investing experience from the 90s, but I can start by sharing an event from 2010, which I recall was when my own stock investing began, or at least it was some kind of initial spark.
The year was 2010, meaning we were living in the post-financial crisis years, and the Eurozone crisis was beginning. I hadn’t invested in stocks before; I kept my money in bank time deposits, partly probably due to the aftermath of the financial crisis. At that time, deposits still yielded a maximum of about 2% interest. I had put 47,000 euros into a time deposit with 2% interest at Sofia Pankki in 2009. As I recall, no other bank at that time could offer anywhere near as good a deposit rate. At the time, it felt like this was a good investment against inflation.
Well, as Wikipedia also states: “The Financial Supervisory Authority revoked the bank’s operating license and placed the bank in liquidation on March 28, 2010, to protect the interests of depositors”. So, in practice, Sofia Pankki went bust. At this point, I broke a sweat 
. 47,000 euros was quite a large sum for me at the time; I was still a student then and was probably only working part-time alongside my studies. However, I had been sensible enough not to put more into Sofia Pankki than the deposit guarantee at the time, which was 50,000 euros. Eventually, I got all my money back, and I don’t recall having to wait very long, a month or two at most, as I remember. I still have a screenshot of Sofia Pankki’s deposits and notes that Sofia Pankki paid back 40,243.71 euros and the deposit guarantee fund 7,102.67 euros, meaning a total of 47,346.38 was returned. The good thing was that the 2% interest, as I recall, rolled almost the entire time until I got my money back.
But from this, I recall, my stock investing began, because I had to think about where to put these roughly 47,000 euros, as after that, you couldn’t really get any interest from anywhere. My brother had invested in stocks, so probably somewhat inspired by him, I borrowed Seppo Saario’s “How I Invest in Stock Exchange Shares” and Malkiel’s “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” from the library and started to see some sense in stock investing, no longer viewing it as such a big risk when looking at the long term. The timing was also excellent, as the Eurozone crisis was ongoing, and stocks were available at cheap prices. However, I remember that at first, the price decline seemed to continue for a while, and the stocks I bought were significantly in the red, and a -5% drop per day several times in a row was not uncommon, and it felt bad at first, but I had to buy them “when they were cheap”.
The first stocks I bought in 2011 were Fortum, then Sampo, Nokia, and Elisa. Of these, only Sampo is still in the portfolio; the others have been sold. In the first year, I bought stocks for about 29,000 euros, and dividends accumulated to 1,375 euros gross in the first year. The following year, in 2012, I had put all of those 47,000 euros from Sofia Pankki into stocks, and I recall I also immediately put everything I dared from my small salary into stocks as prices fell, though a small emergency fund of a few thousand was always there. In 2012, the portfolio included Elisa, Sampo, Fortum, Nokia, Wärtsilä, Konecranes, YIT, UPM, and Kesko. Of these, Sampo, Konecranes, UPM, and Kesko are still in the portfolio; the others have been sold. Now, a little over 10 years later, the portfolio has grown to approximately 580,000 euros, and annual dividend income is about 26,000 euros gross.
So, thanks partly to Sofia Pankki’s bankruptcy, I started stock investing and abandoned time deposits.
How much of your own money have you put into new purchases during this time, in addition to dividends? 2011 was definitely a great time to start investing, but surely you’ve had to add a bit more on top of that initial capital…