One of the most important parts of investing is accepting that you’re never done learning.

Markets change. Narratives shift. What worked last year can stop working overnight.

2025 was one of those years for me.

It reinforced a few hard-earned lessons about sentiment, patience, and risk management that no textbook can teach.

Not because the market was broken, but because it behaved exactly the way markets always do.

So before we turn the page to 2026, here’s what 2025 taught me about investing.

Lesson #1: Sentiment Moves Faster Than Fundamentals

One of the biggest lessons from 2025 is how quickly sentiment can swing, even when the underlying businesses don’t change much at all.

We saw entire sectors fall out of favor in a matter of weeks.

Stocks sold off not because earnings collapsed or balance sheets deteriorated, but because investors collectively decided the story was no longer exciting.

That gap between sentiment and fundamentals is where opportunity lives.

I think that’s exactly what’s happening right now in parts of the AI market.

After a massive run, the mood flipped.

Investors went from blind optimism to relentless skepticism almost overnight. Broad selling followed.

Yet demand hasn’t disappeared.

Data center buildouts are still happening. Contracts are still being signed. The strongest companies in the space are still executing.

In several cases, these stocks are now cheaper than at any point over the last 1-2 years.

That doesn’t mean prices rebound immediately.

But it does mean the risk-reward has quietly flipped.

From my perspective, this isn’t the end of the AI trade. It’s a reset.

And resets like this often create buying opportunities for investors willing to look past short-term sentiment.

Lesson #2: Being Right Too Early Still Hurts

Another lesson 2025 reinforced is that being early and being wrong feel exactly the same in the moment.

I had a few options trades this year where the thesis was ultimately correct – the businesses continued to execute and the stock went on to make new highs.

The problem was timing.

Options don’t just require you to be right. They require you to be right on schedule.

Being too early can be just as painful as being wrong, especially when volatility works against you.

That experience reinforced the importance of matching the instrument to the idea.

Long-term conviction doesn’t always pair well with short-term leverage.

Sometimes the better move is simply owning the stock and letting time do the work.

Lesson #3: The Best Opportunities Rarely Feel Good at the Time

The best buying opportunity of 2025 was obvious in hindsight: April.

That was when fear peaked. Headlines were ugly. Sentiment was broken. And everyone seemed convinced that something was seriously wrong.

Trump’s tariff scare sent markets into panic mode.

Selling fed on itself. Rational thinking went out the window.

That’s usually how it works.

The best opportunities almost never feel obvious or comfortable when they appear.

They feel risky. They feel lonely. They feel like the exact moment you shouldn’t be buying.

Easier said than done, of course.

When the market is sliding and everyone around you is panicking, pressing the buy button takes real conviction.

But 2025 was a reminder that those uncomfortable moments are often where the real money is made.

Lesson #4: Valuation Still Matters

2025 also reminded me that while chasing the newest, hottest tech company is fun, established businesses trading at cheap prices can be just as lucrative.

Sometimes more so!

Earlier this year, I called Alphabet the cheapest stock in the market.

It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t hyped. But the business was throwing off cash, investing heavily in AI, and trading at a valuation that assumed very little growth.

Since then, the stock is up roughly 92%.

Uber is another example.

At the start of the year, it was trading around 13x earnings despite a growing rideshare and delivery business, improving margins, and a clear path to benefit from autonomous vehicles.

The stock is higher 35% year to date.

And the opportunity isn’t gone.

There are still cheap stocks in today’s market.

My Nuclear Trifecta fits this mold, as does Meta.

Different industries, different stories, same setup: strong underlying businesses priced as if growth is already over.