How I Made 15% on ETFs in Europe in One Year. My First Investing Experience After Immigration

Hi everyone. This is my first article on Medium. I am an IT guy who relocated from Russia to Portugal, and I want to share my first experience of investing in the stock market after moving to Europe.

2023, first visit of Cabo de Roca area

Experience After Immigration

This topic was not completely new for me. Back in Russia, I used **Tinkoff Investments**, so I already knew basic things like stocks, funds, bonds, dividends, taxes, order types, and in general how the stock exchange and the securities market work. I think this is important to mention, because investing has an entry barrier. I still do not consider myself an expert, but it would also not be fair to say that I was a complete beginner.

So why did I decide that I needed to start investing again after moving? Especially after my rather unsuccessful experience with investments in RUB, which ended with frozen assets. On the one hand, people with Russian passports often face restrictions, blocked accounts, and extra attention from financial companies, even if they have legal status in Europe. On the other hand, after moving, I quickly faced another reality: a low interest rate environment.

This is nice when you want to borrow money from a bank. But it is not great when you want to put money into a deposit and get some reasonable return. From the point of view of income, it almost made no sense. At some point, I decided that my legal status, source of income, and tax situation were clear enough to try again. The risk, of course, did not disappear, but at that moment it seemed acceptable to me.

The next question was obvious: what tool should I use to invest in Europe?

A small disclaimer: this is not investment advice and not an instruction to act. I am not a financial advisor, not a tax advisor, and I am not trying to convince anyone to urgently open a brokerage account or buy ETFs. Everything I describe below is my personal experience, my mistakes, my conclusions, and my situation at one specific moment in time. Broker conditions, tax rules, and availability of instruments can change, so before making any decisions it is better to check everything yourself and, if needed, talk to professionals.

I started looking into this in the end of 2024. At that time, I already had a **Revolut** account, and at first I saw it as the simplest option for investing: the app was already on my phone, the interface was familiar, and it seemed logical to start there.

But then I heard about **Interactive Brokers from people I knew and decided to compare the options. In the end, I chose [IBKR](https://www.interactivebrokers.ie/)** for two reasons: first, it looked like a more complete broker with a bigger choice of instruments, and second, the fees looked better for my case. The first thing I faced on the platform was a rather long registration, verification, and testing flow to get access to financial instruments. You need to fill in a lot of information about yourself, confirm documents, answer questions about your investing experience, and go through several steps that may look a bit scary at first. The main thing at this stage is not to give up and calmly go through all the steps. At some point, it feels like you are not opening an investment account, but applying for a risk manager job at a bank. But in general, it can be done. It just takes some patience.

The second thing I faced was an unusual interface and almost no familiar marketing descriptions of financial instruments. In the case of **IBKR, it was easier for me to search outside the platform for information about what exactly I wanted to buy and why. Inside the interface, everything looked more like a working tool for making a trade, not like a place that helps you understand and make an investment decision. Compared to my experience with [Tinkoff Investments](https://www.tbank.ru/invest/), where there was an educational magazine, news, investment ideas, fund showcases, and even a social network, [Interactive Brokers](https://www.interactivebrokers.ie/)** looked like a tool for people who already know what they are doing. At this stage, the main thing is also not to get scared. Believe me, after a few trades, everything becomes much clearer. I hope this article will help you make a bit fewer mistakes than I did :)

Now I will talk about probably the most interesting part: how I chose assets for investment and what my strategy was. As I already wrote above, I invested in funds (ETFs). I did this for a very simple reason: it is the most affordable way, from a financial point of view, to have your capital managed by professionals.

First, buying individual stocks yourself, following companies, news, currency risks, and portfolio rebalancing is difficult and requires knowledge that I do not have yet. Second, with limited personal liquidity, meaning a limited amount of available money, it is simply not possible to reach the same level of diversification that a fund can provide. And diversification in investing is everything. At least in my strategy.

But funds also have a downside. When you choose stocks, you can look not only at dry numbers, but also at the company behind those numbers. You can understand what it does, how it makes money, and whether you like the story at all. When you choose bonds, you can make similar conclusions about the institution that issues them: a government, a company, or a bank. With funds, most of the time you have to make conclusions mainly based on numbers and information about the fund structure: performance, fees, holdings, currency, region, sector, fund size, and so on. At the same time, what exactly the fund “does” in practice still remains a bit of a mystery for me personally. But maybe this is not so important if historically, or over the time period that matters to you, the fund shows returns that make sense compared to the world around it.

Next, I will go through the timeline: how exactly I bought ETFs, which events influenced my decisions, and why my portfolio ended up looking the way it did. Before going into the purchase timeline, here is what my portfolio looked like before I sold everything and fixed the result.

In the end, it was 11 funds which, together, including buy and sell fees and received dividends, brought me about +15% on my invested capital. This is before income tax, which I still have to pay.

1. Buying My First ETF With a New Broker and Figuring Out How It Works

I started with a small amount. I just wanted to test how **Interactive Brokers** works: how to fund the account, how to search for an instrument, how to place an order, and how it all appears later in the portfolio and reports.

When you start with a small amount, it does not make much sense to diversify inside your own portfolio. So I needed instruments that were already balanced inside themselves.

Without digging too deep, together with **ChatGPT, we chose my first fund for investment: [VWRL](https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-ftse-all-world-ucits-etf-usd-distributing/overview) by Vanguard. **The goal was simple: to preserve and grow my current capital in the medium term.

**VWRL is a fund that follows the FTSE All-World index. To put it simply, it invests in large and mid-sized companies around the world. So it was not a bet on one country, one sector, or one specific idea. It was more like buying “a small piece of the whole world market”. Already at this stage, I got two important insights. The first one came almost immediately after [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/) suggested that I look at [VWRL](https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-ftse-all-world-ucits-etf-usd-distributing/overview)**. The second one came later in spring, when it was time to deal with the tax declaration.

1st Insight: The Same Fund Can Trade on Different Exchanges

A fund with the same ticker can trade on different exchanges and in different currencies. For example, VWRL can be bought in EUR on the Amsterdam exchange, in CHF on the Swiss exchange, or in GBP on the London exchange. And here comes a logical question: which exchange should you choose, and what is the difference?

First, the difference is often the currency. In my case, my account was in EUR, so it was more logical to buy the fund on the exchange where it trades in EUR. Otherwise, when buying in another currency, I would also lose money on conversion. Second, there can be a difference in liquidity. In simple words, this means how actively this exact instrument is bought and sold on this exact exchange.

To estimate liquidity, you can look at trading volume and the spread: the difference between the best buy price and the best sell price at that moment. If you accidentally buy something illiquid, you can either buy it at a bad price or later spend a long time trying to sell it when you want to exit.

Third, there can be a difference in transaction fees. In Interactive Brokers, the fee depends not only on the instrument itself, but also on the exchange, currency, pricing plan, and sometimes extra exchange fees.

2nd Insight: Dividends Are Not Always Convenient

Another important point: depending on your strategy, you should choose between funds that pay dividends and funds that reinvest them. In both cases, your total capital can grow. But from the tax and reporting point of view, the difference can be very important.

In my case, under Portuguese tax rules, the fact that dividends are paid into the brokerage account counts as receiving taxable income. Even if I do not plan to withdraw this money. It means that tax has to be paid on it. On top of that, I will also have to pay my accountant extra when filing the tax yearly declaration, so that this income is properly included. At the same time, in my case, dividends were not such a big part of the result. For **VWRL, during the whole period, I got about 20% profit, including buy and sell fees. But only about 7% of this profit** came from dividends. The rest was the growth of the fund’s share price. After that, I started paying much more attention to what exact ETF I was buying: distributing or accumulating. In other words, whether it pays dividends to the investor or automatically reinvests them inside the fund.

Timeframe of buying and selling VWRL on 1Y/5Y scales

2. Deciding to Build My Portfolio on a Market Dip

The next purchase happened in April 2025.

Trump announced new tariffs, the market corrected quite strongly, and I started thinking about my past experience: often in moments like this you want to sit quietly and do nothing, although from the point of view of long-term investing, it can be a good entry point. I did not see this correction as a full crisis. It looked more like a strong market reaction to a news event. So I decided to buy more. This time I added a more meaningful amount of money and decided to diversify the portfolio. First, I averaged down **VWRL, which had also corrected by that time. Second, after a very short discussion with [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/)**, I chose three more funds:

**CSPX — a fund by **iShares that tracks the S&P 500 index. In the end, this fund brought me about 24% return.

Timeframe of buying and selling CSPX on 1Y/5Y scales

**EQQQ — a fund by **Invesco that tracks the Nasdaq 100 index. Including this and later purchases, it brought me an average return of about 19%.

Timeframe of buying and selling EQQQ on 1Y/5Y scales

**EMIM — a fund by iShares that invests in emerging markets. Including this and later purchases, it brought me an average return of about 25%**.

Timeframe of buying and selling EMIM on 1Y/5Y scales

Again, thinking about my past experience, I decided not to buy everything in one day. I split the purchase into two days. And as it turned out, it was a good decision. On the next day after the serious correction, the market fell even lower, although with lower volume. As a result, I was able to buy the same instruments cheaper and average the price a bit.

The main thing here is not to get carried away. If you split the purchase into too many small transactions, you can simply lose part of the benefit on fees. Especially if the transaction amount is small, the currency of the instrument is different from the account currency, and currency conversion is added on top.

It is good that I was right at that moment and the market recovered quite quickly. But I could have been wrong in exactly the same way. Saying “look how smart I am, I bought the dip” would be a classic survivor bias. Maybe I would have seen this purchase only as a lucky one-time entry, if not for the later market corrections caused by more or less the same news reason…

3. In-Between Season: Watching the Portfolio and Making an Unnecessary Sale

After the April 2025 purchase, I tried to build a habit of watching the portfolio and investing regularly. Watching worked well: I often opened the app and checked how things were going. Regular investing was a bit less clear.

At some point, I even decided to take profit on part of my **EMIM** position. But later I bought the same fund again at a higher price, when I added more to the portfolio. In the end, I not only lost on the price difference, but also created a tax event for myself where there could have been none. I sold with profit, which means I received income that now has to be reported.

Apart from that, I just bought a bit more **VWRL** a couple of times, as the most understandable “general” fund for me, where I could slowly put small amounts without thinking too much.

4. Deep Research in Action: Trying to Choose ETFs More Consciously

Another tariff announcement from Trump matched the moment when I had a financial chance to increase my portfolio again. At the same time, I decided to diversify it a bit more. At that moment, I was already thinking something like: wow, I have already lost count of how many tariff announcements from Trump this is. Will it really work again?

This time I was already using the Deep Research feature in **ChatGPT, and then I discussed the results in normal [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/)** mode.

I used this prompt:

Hi! The market is down a bit today because of news about trade tariffs. I want to buy some ETFs on Interactive Brokers. Pick funds that can grow over a six-month to one-year horizon. My current portfolio looks like in the screenshot. We can buy more of the same funds or add something new. I have N EUR.

ChatGPT asked follow-up questions:

1. Do you have any preferences by region or country, for example the US, Europe, Asia?
2. What sectors are interesting to you: technology, healthcare, energy, defense, and so on?
3. What level of risk is comfortable for you: more conservative funds or more aggressive growth?
4. Do you want to receive dividends, or focus on price growth?

Based on these preferences, I will pick ETFs that can be bought through Interactive Brokers for N euros.

I answered roughly like this:

1. No preferences, as you can see from my portfolio. The main thing is that there should be reasons for growth, a good fund base, and it should be available for me to buy.
2. Sectors that have good potential and not too many risks.
3. Risk level: medium.
4. Dividends or price growth: does not matter.

After analyzing the Deep Research results, I decided to buy more **EQQQ and [EMIM](https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/264659/ishares-msci-emerging-markets-imi-ucits-etf)**, and also add two more funds to the portfolio. They were supposed to lower volatility a bit and make the portfolio more balanced.

**GBDV — a fund by **State Street that was supposed to protect the portfolio a bit and lower risks. It invests in companies that pay stable dividends.

Timeframe of buying and selling GBDV on 1Y/5Y scales

**IUHC* — a fund by iShares* that added a separate bet on the healthcare sector. The logic was simple: whatever happens in the economy, people still need medicine and healthcare.

Timeframe of buying and selling IUHC on 1Y/5Y scales

In the end, both funds gave me a small return, more or less as planned. In October 2025, I faced another market dip and decided to buy a bit more again. With the help of Deep Research, taking into account my existing portfolio and goals, we decided to add a new defensive asset. This time it was gold.

This choice surprised me. The selected fund by iShares, with the ticker **EGLN, was already near its peak after a clear growth phase. The idea of adding an instrument connected to gold seemed reasonable to me. But the entry price did not. So I launched another Deep Research to separately check the risk of entering at the current price. In the end, the analysis showed that the risks looked acceptable, and I decided to buy [EGLN](https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/258441/ishares-physical-gold-etc-fund)** at the current price.

Timeframe of buying and selling EGLN on 1Y/5Y scales

Psychologically, it was not the most comfortable decision: buying a defensive asset after growth felt strange. But in the end, it also gave me a small return by the time I exited all positions.

5. Buying for the Last Time, Without Knowing That in One and a Half Months I Would Exit Everything

At the beginning of February 2026, I again had capital to buy assets for the portfolio, and I wrote a simple prompt for Deep Research **ChatGPT**:

My current portfolio on Interactive Brokers: <list of positions with ticker name and number of shares in the portfolio> I want to invest another N EUR. I need recommendations for a balanced portfolio with moderate risk over a one-year horizon.

As usual for deep research function, ChatGPT asked follow-up questions:

Thank you for the data about your current portfolio. To give accurate recommendations, please clarify:

1. What currency are you planning to invest in: EUR, or do you need to convert to USD?
2. Do you want to keep the current ETFs, or is rebalancing allowed, for example selling part and buying something else?
3. Are there any sectors or regions you want to exclude or, on the contrary, increase: the US, emerging markets, ESG, and so on?
4. Is dividend yield important to you?

After that, I will choose a balanced strategy based on moderate risk and a one-year horizon.

And here are my not very detailed, lazy answers. Chats with LLM models do not always help you think deeply.

1. I deposit EUR, and then Interactive Brokers converts it into the needed currency for the purchase.
2. Rebalancing is allowed if it does not affect taxes. I am a tax resident of Portugal.
3. Based on your recommendations after analyzing the current world situation.
4. Focus on efficient portfolio growth through share price growth.

Based on the analysis, I made several purchases. First, I bought a bit more **EGLN**, meaning gold.

Second, I added small-cap companies to the portfolio for diversification through the fund by State Street with the ticker **WOSC**.

Timeframe of buying and selling WOSC on 1Y/5Y scales

Third, I bought defensive assets with the tickers **VAGF (by Vanguard) and [IGLA](https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/products/291402/ishares-global-govt-bond-ucits-etf) *(by iShares). Both funds invest in bonds, which had not been part of my portfolio before. Considering that just one and a half months later I exited all positions, this purchase did not bring me anything except small losses on fees. I already had gold, but I did not have commodities, so I also decided to invest in the **CMOD** fund by Invesco***. I also lost a bit on it, because the price fell slightly during those one and a half months. Also, the fund traded on the Italian exchange, which charged extra fees for operations. I did not pay attention to this at all when buying, and only learned about it later, when I was analyzing the report and writing this article.

I made a separate mistake when buying **IGLA. I did not take low liquidity into account and placed a **market order.

Me as a dummy teapot and happy seller

Advice from my personal experience: if liquidity is low, do not be lazy and place a limit price above which you do not want to buy. Most likely, you will not lose much if the order simply does not execute. But you also will not accidentally give money to a seller who listed the shares at a high price and is waiting for inexperienced buyers like me.

Apart from that, these purchases did not really bring me anything. Just one and a half months later, I exited all positions. But I also did not lose much, which I consider a success in this situation :)

6. Final Thoughts and Whether I Will Come Back

As I wrote several times, in March 2026 I exited all positions. My life situation changed, and I redirected all my capital to needs that were also pleasant, important, and useful for our family. Overall, I liked this experience. This was already my second investment cycle, if we count my Russian experience before relocation, and these are the conclusions I made for myself.

1Judging by the growth of financial markets, inflation in the world is just crazy. So if you do not feel that a market crash is waiting just around the corner, investments can be a good way to at least preserve capital. Especially in Europe, where deposit rates simply do not cover inflation.

2Trump manipulates the market. Just like Elon Musk. Probably other people do it too, just not so visibly. This can be part of your strategy: while others panic, you earn. But of course, it only works if you read the situation correctly, not if you are just guessing.

3 Investing with AI has become much easier, but you still have to make the decisions. Use LLMs with internet access for research, fund comparison, checking fees, tax details, and the general logic of the portfolio. But do not move the responsibility to the model. Check the conclusions and make decisions yourself.

4If I decide to invest again, I will definitely take into account my technical mistakes when working with the broker. I will pay more attention to the instrument currency, exchange, liquidity, fees, fund type, and tax consequences of operations.

5 And one last thing: it seems that you should always buy on corrections and sell on growth. In reality, it is not that simple. You need to look not only at the historical chart and your own feeling of “well, this looks cheap now”, but also at the situation around it and expert forecasts. Sometimes a correction is an opportunity. And sometimes it is only the beginning of a bigger fall.

Never forget that investing is a risk. Especially if you are not sure that you are ready to keep your capital locked in investments for a long time in case of a drawdown.

Will I come back to this again? Most likely, yes. But even more calmly, more carefully, and with a bit more understanding of what I am doing.

I wish everyone financial and mental well-being!