So why did you switch to a more complex, active plan? (Sincere question.)
A while ago I read a book called "The Fourth Turning", written by some historians. This book analyzed cycles that occur. It is too much to try to explain here, but the short version is that we are in the middle of the cycle that is characterized by chaos and a reset of the status quo. A simplified explanation might be generational shifting or major geopolitical changes. The previous cycle of this type was around WW2 and led to the setting up of the USA as the dominant world power and currency.
As the pandemic was starting, I learned about the exponential growth curve and how things go very slowly then hit the hockey stick curve and go up very rapidly. I think that this applies to certain technologies as well as to virus replication. There has been a lot of discussion on these forums revolving around bashing Ark and Cathie Wood.
The governments all around the world began to issue currency in response to the pandemic slowdown all around the world. I became concerned about the effect of such a huge expansion of the currency supply. This is another huge discussion all by itself: inflation, debt spiral, government ability to service huge debts.
Previously I had felt that assets like the stock market were irrationally overvalued and in bubble mode. Applying an analysis of the increase in currency supply led me to believe that the asset prices were not actually rising, but the unit that they were measured in (USD) was declining. When you combine this idea with the idea that certain companies are developing technologies that will follow an exponential growth curve, they may not seem as overvalued as people think.
I decided that my "good enough to get by" investment performance was not going to cut it if we end up in a chaotic environment where currency purchasing power was rapidly declining.
One approach might be to simply increase my equity allocation with index funds. However, it seemed that in indexes like the SP500 most of the companies were doing poorly and the index was only holding up because it was overweight massively profitable companies. Also, many of the companies that might eventually become important were not in the indexes.
In the meantime I was watching some videos expounding the idea that you could invest in fewer companies as long as you really understood and monitored those investments. Even Warren Buffet has said stuff along these lines. I also became aware of the possibility of using options. Not necessarily to become a highly leveraged maniac, but to generate some extra income by selling calls and maybe using options to hedge near market tops.
So, all of this, gave the the notion to begin to pay more attention to what I am doing with the investments and to begin to dip my toe into beginner options trading and to pick a few high conviction companies and see how things go with that.
I am not planning to be an active in and out trader. At this point I am in the process of buying stocks to establish new positions to bring me up to a higher equity allocation percentage. However, once I have these positions in the high-conviction companies and have increased my already existing position size in total market indexes I plan to be a buy and hold investor, even with the individual stocks. However, I may take a percentage of my shares in the single companies an try to swing trade or hedge at tops.
And lastly, along the idea of the Fourth Turning cycle destroying the existing and resetting into the system for then next few cycles, I started to investigate the potential for things like crypto assets and decentralized finance to cause changes to the way things work.
Well, I hope you really meant you were asking a sincere question. You certainly got a sincere answer.
