Trading & Investing: Follow Others, But Build Your Own Conviction
By Harsh Shah · Updated
Have you ever bought a stock simply because someone else told you to?
Maybe it was a friend, a family member, a YouTuber, or someone on social media with an impressive track record. They sounded confident, the chart looked good, and the opportunity seemed obvious. So you bought it.
At first, everything went well. The stock moved higher, you made some money, and it felt like investing was easier than everyone made it seem. Maybe you were up 10%, 20%, or even 30% within a few weeks or months.
Then one day, a position moved sharply against you.
Suddenly, all that confidence disappeared. You started questioning the trade, wondering if you should sell before the losses got worse. Eventually, you exited the position, only to realize later that you never truly understood why you bought the stock in the first place.
And then the cycle began.
You stopped following that person and started looking for someone else with a better track record. Someone who seemed to have the answers. You followed their ideas, took their trades, and hoped things would be different this time.
For many investors, that cycle repeats over and over again.
I know because I went through it myself.
When I first started investing, I relied heavily on the opinions of friends and family. Whenever someone told me a stock was going higher, I bought it. Sometimes it worked. In fact, a few of those positions generated great returns and convinced me that investing was easy.
But eventually, one bad position wiped out most of those gains.
That’s when I started asking a different question.
What if the problem wasn’t the people I was following?
What if the problem was me?
That realization led me down a path of understanding how investing actually works, how different investors approach the market, and why blindly following someone else’s ideas rarely works in the long run.
Because investing is a lifelong skill. The stock market will be here long after today’s trends, influencers, and hot stock picks are forgotten. And if we’re willing to put in the effort to understand it, it may be one of the most valuable skills we ever develop.
The Root Cause
Every investor has a different strategy, but everyone has the same goal: to make money.
Some people are traders looking for quick moves. Others are willing to hold stocks for years, like Warren Buffett. Neither approach is wrong. The right approach is simply the one that works for you.
Think about it this way. If you’re a software engineer and someone asks you to fix a plumbing issue or build furniture from scratch, you’ll probably struggle. Not because you’re incapable, but because that’s not what you’ve spent time learning and practicing.
Investing is no different.
Every person is wired differently. Some investors can comfortably sit through a 50% drawdown and sleep peacefully at night. Others start panicking when they’re down 10%. Neither person is wrong. They simply have different personalities, risk tolerances, and goals.
That’s why the first step isn’t finding someone to follow. It’s understanding who you are as an investor.
So, Is Following Someone a Bad Thing?
Absolutely not.
In fact, I think following other traders and investors is one of the fastest ways to learn. You get exposure to new ideas, different strategies, and opportunities you might never have discovered on your own.
The problem isn’t following someone. The problem is blindly following them.
Instead of just copying trades, try to understand why they’re taking them. What are they seeing in the chart? How are they managing risk? What would make them exit the position?
The more you understand their process, the more you’ll be able to build your own set of rules and conditions that fit your personality. And that’s what ultimately gives you confidence when markets get volatile.
Why I Believe Following Others Is Valuable
One of the biggest advantages of following experienced investors is that you can learn from years of experience in a much shorter period of time. Their successes teach you what works, and their mistakes teach you what to avoid.
Following others also increases your market coverage. No single person can track every stock, sector, or opportunity. By following people with different styles and expertise, you’ll naturally discover ideas that may never have appeared on your radar.
Most importantly, you’ll be exposed to different ways of thinking. Sometimes the biggest lesson isn’t the stock itself, but the process behind the decision.
That’s incredibly valuable when you’re trying to develop your own investing framework.
The Danger of Blindly Following
Blindly copying someone else’s trades can work for a while. Maybe once. Maybe twice. Maybe even a few times in a row.
Then eventually one trade goes wrong.
And that’s when the difference between understanding a trade and simply copying it becomes obvious.
The person you’re following may still make money because they understand the risks, have a strategy, and know exactly why they’re holding the position. When the stock drops, they don’t panic because they expected volatility and planned for it.
You, on the other hand, may not know what to do because you’re relying on someone else’s conviction.
The same thing happened to me. I bought five stocks because someone I followed recommended them. One of them dropped nearly 60% overnight. I panicked and sold everything because I didn’t truly understand any of the positions I owned.
Ironically, the other four stocks later recovered and generated gains that would have more than offset the loss from that one bad trade. But I wasn’t around to benefit because I had already sold.
Looking back, the biggest mistake wasn’t buying the stocks. The mistake was buying something I didn’t understand.
I had no conviction of my own.
I was borrowing someone else’s conviction.
And borrowed conviction never lasts.
The Fix and My Goal
After burning myself multiple times, I finally realized that I needed my own approach to investing. Over time, I’ve built my own filters, risk management rules, and processes that make sense to me in the sea of chaos that is the stock market.
I’m not saying my way is the only way. It’s simply the approach that fits my personality, my risk tolerance, and how I think about the markets.
I’ve been writing about investing for almost 10 months now, publishing over 90 blogs. One thing I’ve always tried to do differently is explain the reasoning behind every trade or investment idea. Most people share a ticker and a target price. I prefer sharing the thesis, the risks, the key levels, and what could prove the idea wrong.
Because of that, my website, datadriveninvesting.io, has become much more education-focused. Every chart setup comes with a detailed explanation of the pattern and my thought process. My goal isn’t to tell people what to buy or sell. It’s to help others find their own way through the noise and build a lifelong skill.
And now, with AI, I’m taking that a step further. As a software engineer, automation is something I naturally gravitate toward. I’m building scanners[preview] and tools that automatically surface opportunities based on the setups I look for. The goal isn’t to remove human decision-making from investing — it’s to spend less time searching and more time thinking.
Why I Care
One question I often ask myself is: why spend so much time writing about investing?
The answer is simple.
I’m nobody special. I don’t come from a finance background. I’m not a Wall Street analyst, portfolio manager, or hedge fund manager. I’m just someone who became fascinated by the markets and spent years learning through trial and error.
Along the way, I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Some of those mistakes cost me thousands of dollars. Looking back, many of those losses were simply tuition fees paid to the market.
If sharing my experiences, successes, and failures helps even one person avoid some of those costly mistakes, then it’s worth it.
The good news is that I don’t rely on investing content as my primary source of income. I have a full-time career as a software engineer that already pays the bills. That gives me the freedom to focus on what I enjoy most: learning, building tools, and sharing ideas that might help others become better investors.
If my journey can help improve yours, then every blog post has served its purpose.
Final Thoughts…
Follow others. Learn from them. Study their process. Ask questions. There is a lot of value in seeing how successful investors think and operate. But don’t blindly copy their trades.
Build your own system. Create your own rules. Develop your own conviction.
Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t to become a better follower. The goal is to become a better investor. And that only happens when you start thinking for yourself.
Remember, borrowed conviction never lasts.