Five years into the market, still feeling very confused

The first half is a detailed record of my investment journey. The investment ideas are at the bottom. If you don’t want to read the detailed record, you can scroll directly to the bottom. Please give me some advice, thank you all experts.

Investment Journey

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2020 and entered the internet industry. I know that internet careers are often short-lived, so I wanted to plan ahead and save enough money before turning 35. My family elders only knew about fixed-term bank deposits. At that time, I happened to come across some fund advertisements, so I started investing in funds in July 2020. I bought China Europe Medical and Zhang Kun’s E Fund Blue Chip, learning a lot about technical analysis along the way. I kept buying during market dips. After receiving my year-end bonus before 2021, I went all-in, which marked the start of my trapped-in position.

Later, I learned some basic knowledge from bank screw-in products. Although my experience with screw-in investment advisory products was not very good, they served as my investment guides, for which I am quite grateful. I also experienced deep losses in Chinese internet stocks during undervalued periods, which was very painful. In 2022, I suddenly became interested in dividend yield as a metric, buying some bank stocks and low-volatility dividend ETFs. Fortunately, these investments helped soothe my mood and prevented me from giving up on the stock market entirely. During this period, I also tried using yield-to-maturity to select convertible bonds. Luckily, none of the bonds defaulted, and each yielded good returns.

Between 2023 and 2024, the big bear market made me lose interest in financial management, and I stopped paying much attention to the market. I only maintained some dollar-cost averaging investments. Fortunately, these investments helped me recover my principal and even make a few tens of thousands during the September 24th period. At that point, I decided to deepen my investment studies.

In 2025, during a major bull market, I am naturally very cautious. I only achieved a 12.85% return for the year, mainly because one-third of my portfolio was in government bonds, which lagged far behind the market. With the rise of AI, I have also felt that AI greatly improves work efficiency. I don’t doubt that in a few years, AI will significantly reduce jobs similar to mine. Therefore, I believe it’s important to develop sustainable investment skills to earn stable income before being replaced.

Investment Strategy

Currently, I have 1 million yuan in available funds, with an additional 300,000 yuan per year (only guaranteed for the next three or four years). I aim to maximize returns with minimal drawdowns.

I backtested daily data on CSI Dividend and Low-Volatility Dividend ETFs, achieving about 10% annualized return and an 18% maximum drawdown (excluding the 2018 crash, which had a max drawdown of around 10%). I plan to use some positions for convertible bond rotation, mainly based on yield-to-maturity as the key factor. I also follow some reputable influencers and their portfolios on Xueqiu (mainly value investors), writing scripts to monitor their rebalancing periodically, as I don’t have much time to watch the markets constantly. My future asset allocation is as follows:

• CSI Dividend 20%
• Low-Volatility Dividend 20%
• Convertible Bond Rotation 20%
• Stock picks based on research (including some IPO gains) 20%
• Cash 20%

Currently, I have no plans to buy a house in the next five years. My family doesn’t have other financial needs for me to cover. However, I feel there are few strategies with moderate to low risk and stable returns. Recently, I’ve been looking into stock index futures discounts, wondering if that counts as such a strategy. I’d appreciate guidance from experienced investors. As I age and AI develops, my anxiety is growing. Thank you all in advance.