I paid the price to learn about foreign currency FD

I chose to invest in it on a month by month renewal contract rather than a fixed term of a few months so that my cash would be liquid if I needed it. Now, six months later, I decided it’s time to withdraw and put my cash into gold instead. Actually, this isn’t the best of time to withdraw because our Ringgit has strengthened a little and that only means that the bank’s buying price of the foreign currency would not be much in my favour.

I didn’t do a thorough calculation, but assumed that the interests earned over 6 months would be sufficient to cover the bank’s exchange rate spread. Well now I learned that I should be thorough and invest longer term until the exchange rate is going in my favour! It’s too late, and everything when looked in retrospect seems easy. I could’ve chosen to not withdraw, but I would be losing out on a potentially better investment in the commodities sector.

Like many say, we win some and we lose some. I guess investing is like that. You win some from some investments, and you lose in some others. As long as at the end of the day you’re not investing in only losses, every bad investment decision should be taken as a lesson. Sure, you paid the price handsomely if the loss is big, but you become wiser and that’s the price you pay for not repeating a similar mistake in the future.

So here I am, getting over the loss and moving on. Now let’s hope I’m going to do better in other areas of my portfolio.