I Used My Car Savings to Buy Shares After a Friend's Success, It Ended in Tears

In December 2025, I made a financial decision that cost me more than Ksh50,000 in less than two weeks.

It all started with a conversation at work. One of my colleagues was celebrating how he had turned a Ksh10,000 investment in Uchumi Supermarkets shares into more than Ksh60,000.

He had made over Ksh50,000 without doing anything other than buying shares and watching their value increase.

I was impressed. I also wanted to make that kind of money.

The following day, I invested Ksh100,000 in the same shares. Unfortunately, things did not turn out as I expected.

This is how it all began.

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I started working at a startup in 2024. At the time, I had several financial goals, but one of my biggest ambitions was to buy my first car.

In January 2025, I decided to become more intentional about saving. I wanted to accumulate enough money to make a substantial contribution towards buying a second-hand car without relying entirely on a loan.

I developed a savings routine, setting aside part of my salary every month. By November 2025, I had saved Ksh105,000. It was not enough to buy the car I wanted, but I was proud of the progress.

Then came a conversation that changed everything.

One afternoon in December, I overheard my colleagues discussing the stock market. They were talking about how Uchumi Supermarkets shares had been rising and how investors who had bought them earlier in the year were making impressive gains.

One colleague was particularly excited. He explained that he had invested Ksh10,000 in February when the shares were trading at around Ksh0.29 each.

By December, the price had risen to around Ksh1.80. His portfolio was worth approximately Ksh62,000, representing a gain of more than Ksh50,000.

I could not stop thinking about those figures.

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During lunch, I approached him to understand how he had made the investment. He explained how he had bought the shares and how much their value had increased.

But I never asked the most important questions.

Why were Uchumi shares rising? What was happening at the company? Was the price sustainable? What could go wrong?

All I wanted to know was how to buy the shares.

That evening, I went online and searched for guides on how to buy shares at the NSE.

By the following day, I felt confident enough to make my first investment. All I needed was my phone and money in my mobile money account.

I bought Uchumi shares worth Ksh100,000 at approximately Ksh1.85 each.

That was almost all the money I had saved towards buying my car.

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I convinced myself that I was making a smart decision. If my colleague had turned Ksh10,000 into more than Ksh60,000, perhaps I could turn Ksh100,000 into something much bigger, given that my colleagues teased that the price could even hit Ksh4 per share.

I imagined that the profits would help me buy my car sooner.

However, almost immediately after buying the shares, the price started falling.

But each day, I checked my portfolio and found that its value had fallen further.

I had never experienced such volatility before. Watching money I had spent almost a year saving disappear from my investment account was frightening.

By December 19, Uchumi shares had fallen to Ksh0.96. My investment had lost nearly half its value on paper.

As Christmas approached, I became increasingly anxious. I could see that the share price was falling, and I was worried that waiting longer would leave me with even less money.

I decided to sell. However, finding buyers was not as straightforward as I had imagined. Demand had weakened, and I could not immediately dispose of all my shares at the price I wanted.

Over the following trading sessions, I managed to sell my holdings at an average price of approximately Ksh0.90 per share.

I recovered about Ksh48,600 from the Ksh100,000 I had invested, before transaction charges.

In less than two weeks, I had lost approximately Ksh51,400.

The money had taken me nearly a year to accumulate. Yet I had lost half of it after making an investment decision based on a conversation that lasted only a few minutes. My dream of buying a car suddenly felt much further away.

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What I Learnt From Losing Half My Savings

Looking back, my biggest mistake was not necessarily buying Uchumi shares. It was investing without understanding what I was buying.

I had not researched the company's financial performance, its challenges or why investors were suddenly interested in its shares.

I did not even consider whether the price had already risen too much.

My colleague had bought his shares months earlier at a much lower price. By the time I entered the market, the circumstances were completely different.

I had focused on his profits without considering the risks he had taken or the possibility that I was buying near the peak.

I also made another mistake: investing almost all my savings in a single company.

That money had a purpose. I was saving towards buying a car, yet I exposed nearly the entire amount to an investment whose risks I did not understand.

Today, I still want to invest in shares, but I approach the idea differently.

I have learnt that investing requires more than knowing how to open a trading account and place an order. You need to understand the company, why its shares are moving and whether the investment fits your financial goals.

Most importantly, someone else's profit is not a guarantee that you will make money by following them.