3 reasons I pulled my money out of stocks and put it into a high-yield CD

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• During the pandemic, I tried out trading stocks for the first time, and it went poorly.
• The stocks I bought were basically random, and I wasn't able to give my portfolio close attention.
• I pulled my money out and put it in a CD with a 5% APY, and I'm happier with the guaranteed return.

During the pandemic, I made one of the riskiest financial moves of my life. For the first time, I decided to withdraw money from my savings account and invest it in the stock market.

Irresponsible buying decisions and a lack of attention on my stock portfolio caused me to lose thousands of dollars over the past few years. That's why, in 2023, my goal was to try to fix my investment strategy and eliminate risk.

To do that, I decided to take money out of the stock market and put it into some of the best CDs instead. Here are the three reasons I'm glad I made that choice.

1. I had been investing in individual stocks

As a rookie investor in 2020, I decided to take money out of my savings account and buy random individual stocks. I didn't have a strategy or any professional advice. Instead, I bought stock in companies that I liked or listened to advice from friends who were always new to investing in the stock market.

I treated my stock portfolio like it was a game and the money I was putting in wasn't real. I didn't research companies, buy index funds, or attempt to diversify the types of stocks I was buying.

Because of that, my results weren't good, and my risk was very high. Since my initial lack of strategy had failed me, I decided that keeping the money in these declining stocks wasn't going to benefit me. Instead, putting the money in a 5% APY one-year CD would at least help me inch back closer to my initial investment three years ago.

2. Trading stocks required more attention than I could give

I spent the last few years watching the individual stocks I bought rise and fall. I didn't sell any of these stocks when they were high or low. Since I wasn't paying frequent attention to the market, I didn't have a pulse on my stock's performance or the timing of when it was up and I could sell.

Since some of the stocks reached an all-time high a few years ago and have been declining since, I felt like I had missed my opportunity to sell. Instead of hoping for a future payday, I decided that some of that money would benefit me by sitting still in a CD that would earn me 5% APY, guaranteed, in just one year.

3. I wanted to reset my investment strategy

When I first invested in the stock market, my goal was to buy individual stocks as a long-term investment. However, since my stock picks were random and my portfolio wasn't diversified, I realized that the odds of me making money in the future with this current strategy were very low.

I felt like I needed a big financial reset this year, so I decided to switch up my investment strategy. Instead of focusing so much on long-term investment goals, I wanted to use short-term investment goals to help me recoup some of my lost money first.

My plan was to take some money out of the stock market, grow it in 5% APY CDs, and then reinvest the money made on the CDs next year in a more thoughtful long-term stock market portfolio.

Featured Nationally Available CD and Savings Rates

Account Name	APY (Annual Percentage Yield) Accurate as of 6/27/2024	Minimum Account Opening Balance
Western Alliance Bank High-Yield Savings Premier	5.36%	$500
BrioDirect High-Yield Savings Account	5.30%	$5,000
Forbright Growth Savings	5.30%	$0
Barclays 1 Year Online CD	5.00%	$0
Banc of California 3 Month CD, powered by Raisin	5.34%	$1
Barclays 6 Month Online CD	4.85%	$0
SkyOne Federal Credit Union 1 Year No Penalty CD	4.75%	$1
Discover 18 Month CD	4.40%	$2,500
Bread Savings 2 Year High-Yield CD	4.65%	$1,500
Quontic 5 Year CD	4.30%	$500