our worst investments

[preben]

That would be about $15k lost in a year 2000 .com period IPO (www.letsbuyit.com) was supposed to be a reverse auction thing with people buying stuff together and getting volume discounts.... all I invested lost and cost me more in broker fees to clear the thing from account than what I had left...

Live and learn!

Cheers!

 

[modhatter]

My verty FIRST stock I purchased in my life was through a tip. I didn't know a thing. (about 30 years ago) I bought $2,000 of some "oil something" company. It was good at first. Paid good dividends too. I left it alone for years. Then when I contacted brokerage house where I bought it, I was told it was sold, and there were only a couple of shares left. I asked "What do you mean it is sold. I never instructed you to sell it." They replied well, it wasn't doing anything, and "their policy" stated you couldn't just let a stock sit indefinately without trading it." I asked where the money went, and they told me it was just enough to pay commissions, and there wasn't any.

This is a true story. Needless to say, that left a very bitter taste in my mouth for stocks, and never touched them from that day on. (Got involved with real estate instead where I was in total control)

 

[MJ]

As I mentioned in another thread my nestegg in the late 90's grew out of my generous salary that I frugally socked away and put into CDs. I stupidly got the urge to get into the stock market in late 98. Some people complain about losing big gains. I lost principal money, big time. C'est la vie.

 

[Cut-Throat]

This is a true story. Needless to say, that left a very bitter taste in my mouth for stocks, and never touched them from that day on. (Got involved with real estate instead where I was in total control)

The problem was with the Brokers not the Stock. I wonder what that stock would have been worth today?

 

[astromeria]

I almost forgot this one... my husband went to a startup, paid $12k upfront to exercise his stock options, company went bust a year or so later. So the next startup, he didn't exercise the options upfront (he needed over $50k and I flat refused!). This place made it big, and when he sold his stock, he had to pay nearly 50% in taxes (Fed and Calf). Ouch.

 

[Maximillion]

Worst Investment Decision I made was when ny old boss came up with this idea for a container to replace Glass Bottles in the OR, for collecting Blood etc.

I was 25, he wanted me to take the Eastern US, I was to get a share of the company, I was in lust so I turned it down.
(sales now in the 10's of millions).

Second, 1969, a little company called Velcro.

 

[SamHouston]

One of the biggest and worst investments I have made was in a financial advisor.

I hear you loud and clear on this one. That was my biggest mistake in my 25 years of investing. I only made it once, but it was fairly recently, and I still kick myself for getting fooled by those scam artists.

 

[HFWR]

We're professionals... Don't try this at home...

CSCO at $80...

 

[BigMoneyJim]

I think my worst investment was an almost-new vehicle, but that's for another thread I guess.

As told by an ex-United coworker: Apparently United Airlines had stock in a pension (or somesuch) plan for employees, but you couldn't cash out until you retire. Unless you divorced. Several (lots of?) United employees divorced, cashed the stock and then remarried. My coworker wanted to do it, but his wife wouldn't go for it. They subsequently lost $100k - $200k in value.

 

[Slarty]

Bought property in eastern PA in 1990. Then I had to Switch jobs and moved to the mid-west 9 months later. I didn't sell the property for 3 years and tried to hold out by renting it since I'd lose >$7k in broker fees alone. My realtor managed the property for me. After renters trashed the placed and had to be evicted at the end of the 3 years I spent $4k fixing it up and then lost $10k selling it. I didn't touch real estate again until recently.

 

[mb]

I have learned a couple of lessons from financial mistakes but looking back they have actually been fairly insignificant in the long run:

(1) Bought a Whole Life policy at age 21.  I didn't need life insurance!  They sold it to me as an investment but it wasn't until two years later that I realized what a lousy investment it was and cancelled.

(2) Worked with a stock broker in the early 80s that seemed to be really good at generating commisions but not very good at putting me in good stocks.  I think that his basic thought process went something like this "Maybe we can generate another commision from ol' what's his name.  Let's see what can we sell him this time?"  I'm sure that there are some brokers out there that earn their commisions.  This one didn't.

(3)  Rode DW's company stock in her employee stock purchase plan through a 70% loss.  It was 15-20% of net worth at the time.  Won't let that happen again because of a single stock.

Like a lot of people I also lost a fair amount of money in the market decline following the dot com bust but I wasn't over weighted in tech when it started to go down so I don't consider that to be a mistake, just one of the things that you need to go through if you invest in the market.

MB

 

[dusk_to_dawn]

Worst investment, the first house I bought. DW wanted something new, so we bought in the exurbs (beyond the suburbs) thinking that when the growth came our way, we would do pretty good. Bought for 210K in 1994 and sold for 245K in 2003. I probably had 250K invested in the house. I look back at the houses I could have bought close to the city and I would say that first house cost me at least 100K in opportunity cost. Oh well, live and learn. I moved and now live within walking distance of the University campus. There hasn't been a "For Sale" sign in my neighborhood for almost two years.

Any young people looking to buy your first house, remember the old Real Estate saying, Location, Location, Location.

 

[mathjak107]

worst investment? my tall man shop in tokyo

 

[justin]

Worst stock - Lucent. Lost about $5k on it. That amounts to a 95% loss. I'm still holding it, waiting to sell it for a capital loss writeoff. That was back when I was 19 or 20 (a lot of money for a college student). Luckily it was all money from scholarships I received (play money at the time).

In the grand scheme of things, the $10,000-$20000 I lost in the 2000-2001 crash was a relatively cheap tuition to the "school of investing principles".

Having a financial advisor also cost me big time with the up front sales load on American Funds. I switched to Vanguard and mostly index funds less than a year ago.

I guess it's better to learn these lessons at 25 instead of 35 or 45 or 55.

 

[Sasquatch]

A re-insurance company stock.

A few months before Katrina hit...

 

[eridanus]

US Air about a month before 9/11. I then doubled down later, thinking that surely it would recover.

Dot com options. I was finally able to sell them after a 35:1 reverse split.

 

[Robert the Red]

Worst financial decision: first wife.
Best financial decision: second wife.

 

[laurence]

DCA'd into my first 401k starting in 97, piled 10k into a portfolio that was 50% NASDAQ, watched it grow, grow, grow, to 20k+,then implode when the bubble burst, went as low as 6k.

Now in terms of money, it's nothing compared to the numbers you all threw out here, but emotionally I was devestated! I only made 22k a year back then, this was everything I had in the world! My car was worth less than a grand, and the checking account only had more than three figures on payday. This is why DW and I focused on debt reduction first when we got married, that was a garanteed return. Only in the past two years have we started to seriously get into investing again. Learned I was doing everything wrong. Glad I'm still kinda young and can make use of these lessons.

 

[Martha]

Worst financial decision: first wife.
Best financial decision: second wife.

Big Love?

 

[tryan]

Shorted the NASDAQ 100 in Feb 2000 ... lost 9k in about 3 weeks. Then sat on the side line as it tanked a month later. Ouch!

 

[treypar]

My worst was a Variable Life Policy sold to me by my friend  who was a financial advisor. The insurance company went into receivership and my funds were tied up for a long time.

 

[d]

a Variable Life Policy sold to me by my friend 

some friend!

 

[2B]

There are two statements that automatically prove anyone is a crook or an idiot. They are "annuity" and "technical analysis."

BTW -- I used to be a psyco technical analyst. I traded all of the classical and "special" options available to technical analysts. Eventually, I realized it worked about half the time.

 

[Nords]

Shorted the NASDAQ 100 in Feb 2000 ... lost 9k in about 3 weeks.  Then sat on the side line as it tanked a month later.  Ouch!

An ER'd uncle-in-law started shorting the NASDAQ in late '97 and kept it up until he ran out of margin-call money in late 1999. He shorted himself right back into the workplace.

That wouldn't be N**y Nutual Aid Association, would it? If so, you and I were probably classmates.

Welcome to the board, gmb, that would be them!

'82, 12th Co. I went public a few weeks ago. Which Class/Co are you? I have my Lucky Bag at hand...

I've been posting under this handle for over two years wondering if a shipmate would stumble across this board. You appear to be the first!

 

[wabmester]

Shorted the NASDAQ 100 in Feb 2000 ...

I never got that bold, but I did blow several grand buying EBAY puts in 1999.   That hurt, but at least my downside was limited.

One of my biggest losses was on BDH -- Broadband HLDRs.   I knew there was a dot-com bubble going on, but somehow I completely missed the fact that bandwidth providers were just as bubbly.    Those guys were the ones selling the picks and shovels, right?   And I was diversified across several providers, right?  Ugh.   90% loss.