Bad investment habits cannot be fixed on their own. With each new year, the market offers you new opportunities to repeat them.
So, at the beginning of each year, I sit down and take into account last year’s worst failures and try to figure out how to avoid them next time. Here are three mistakes in 2025 that I definitely don’t want to repeat. Please try to learn from my experiences.
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My default approach Bitcoin(CRYPTO: BTC) like that dollar-cost averaging (DCA)purchases a fixed dollar amount on a regular schedule, regardless of price. It’s deliberately boring and prevents any one purchase from carrying too much emotional baggage or ruining my life, at least when I sit back and let the automatic purchases I’ve set up do their thing. cost basis too much. You can probably see where this is going.
I got impatient in 2025 and made a large, unplanned purchase as the cryptocurrency surpassed $120,000, a level it had never reached before. I told myself that I was acting decisively and taking advantage of the significant amount of unallocated capital at my disposal. In fact, I was falling victim to crypto FOMO (fear of missing out) for the hundredth time, and this time in an (almost) more devastating way than the others. Of course, the price has dropped a lot since that big purchase.
I have not sold and do not plan to sell because I believe the long-term investment thesis is still strong. But I made my cost basis (average price paid) for my location much worse, and for no strategic reason. My new rule for 2026 is that if I want to buy an asset faster than my current DCA program plans, I adjust the size of my regular purchases for a specific time period.
I was aware Zcash(CRYPTO: ZEC) for years. In 2025, as I was lazing around putting in my own effort before making a potential purchase, I watched his narrative escalate. But in a fast-moving market like crypto, laziness is never free, and latecomers are billed with much worse entry prices.
In early October 2025, Zcash more than doubled in about a week as demand for privacy coins increased. A month later, it briefly surpassed its biggest rival. moneroBy market value, this was another sign that privacy interest was shifting in its favor. But then I panicked and did the reading and thinking I needed to do to decide if I wanted to have it.
I eventually bought some of it and started a DCA, but was immediately faced with a loss.
I’m still accumulating Zcash and generally don’t panic about the timing of my first purchases because I’m pretty confident in its long-term position. But I still missed out on a lot of growth because I failed to focus when my mind first started bugging me that money could be made with coins. Telling yourself, “I’ll start researching this later” is a decision to agree to buy an asset at a premium if the investment thesis is correct.
My solution for 2026 will be to think more clearly about the costs of investing in an asset whenever I notice something starting to look more interesting on my radar.
Would this save me from this mistake in 2025? Probably not completely, but it would probably be a step in the right direction.
In early April 2025, the fuss around the Trump administration’s newly implemented tariffs left me extremely bewildered and also caused some fear for my portfolio. The market wiped out nearly $5 trillion in value in two days as investors priced in what they then perceived as a rapidly increasing risk of recession. Then, on April 9, 2025, a 90-day tariff pause was announced and the market began to rise.
This variability triggered one of my worst habits, which becomes ineffective when conditions are turbulent. I stopped adding to one of my core positions. SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(NYSEMKT: SPY). I also took a break from buying one of my favorite businesses. Costco Wholesalebecause I was concerned that the stock appeared both expensively valued and highly vulnerable to tariff-related disruptions to its profitability.
At least so far tariffs haven’t turned the sky upside down. The market going up in 2025 caused me to miss out on some gains, and Costco’s shares went into recession, causing me to miss the opportunity to load up.
Solution for next time? Take unpredictable and anxiety-inducing market conditions as an opportunity to practice staying level-headed and consistent in implementing strategies that I know work.
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Alex Carchidi It has positions in Bitcoin, Costco Wholesale, SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, and Zcash. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool recommends Monero. The Motley Fool has a feature disclosure policy.
