I have managed to outperform my real estate investment trust, or REIT, sector (VNQ) benchmarks by a large margin, all while earning a much higher dividend yield: In today's article, I want to go back in time and discuss all the biggest investment mistakes I have ever made. This includes investments that I made even long before launching my investing group on Seeking Alpha in 2018: Nokia was my first investment ever. I was 14 years old and had recently started my first business. I was buying beat-up iPhones, fixing them, and reselling them for a profit.