I never really had an interest in actively managing my investments ("put your 401K in index funds"), much less trading, until I started mining Bitcoin in 2021. Given its volatility, holding BTC didn't seem like a great idea. I also didn't want to (couldn't) watch charts all day, so I got into algo trading. Got that fairly steady in 2022 and was hooked.

In 2023, I was in a position to semi-retire and focus on trading/investing. 1st 6 months of active investing, I outperformed S&P 500 by about 70% (yes, I know—everyone's a genius in a bull market). And then 2nd week of April 2024, I pretty much gave back all my alpha.

I'm currently looking to stabilize and automate my long-term investing so I can focus more on shorter-term algo trading. Glad to be hear and learning things I wish I had found my way to a year ago—would've save my a lot of money and frustration.