The Biggest Investment Mistake Of My Life

Pretty short my worst trade was investing in Starbucks about a year ago. I should of never done it and will never do it again. I didn’t lose as much of my own money, but I basically lost all my gains in the stock pretty quickly.

Not that great of a horrible trade, but it is something. I kept thinking sbux would go back up, but it never did and I didn’t get out until it was too late.

I still don’t think it has gone up to the price I bought it at a year ago.

My biggest mistakes was buying into CROX after earnings, doubling down, and thinking the stock cannot go any lower.

I questioned my own technical analysis and used my emotion.

BAD,BAD,BAD!

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I think my first year in the stock market was just a hole bunch of mistakes. But I agree with you, you never hear of people boasting about the huge losses they take in the stock market.

I listened to a commodities broker back just before hurricane Katrina hit. I wanted to get into Unleaded fuel calls. The broker insisted we look at the put option instead. Of course, Katrina hit and the only thing that went down was my money, down the toilet. Since then i’m looking at solid dividend stocks and forget the high fliers.

A few years ago during the tech bubble I bought CMGI when I first started investing. I was in high school at the time and it seemed this stock and company could do no wrong. I certainly learned my lesson.

My biggest mistake was an investment I did with my brother. Rule #1 of stock investing is to never get emotional about your holding because it will ALWAYS get the best of you. You have to set your enter and exit strategies, stop losses, and be very disciplined about it otherwise you will get smoked…and we did, big time. GNLB was the ticker and man did we get our butts handed to us. After making some serious money on a 60:1 reverse split on a different stock, we got into GNLB and were up after a few days. There was a lot of hype over a new drug they were releasing FDA Phase 2 or 3 Testing (I cant remember) results for. Well needless to say, the test results were not as “impacting” as previously projected and the stock tanked over night. I won’t mention my brother’s loss, but mine was around $10,000. We got too caught up in the hype, took a risk, and were willing to take the initial loss if indeed the results sucked since we knew if they didn’t (and insider trading along with an outside investment party indicated that they were going to be good) that it would be a serious payday. Where we lost the most money was not selling out after the first hit and riding it down even further in hopes that it would kick back up due to better follow-up results and I believe an earnings report or something of that nature that was supposed to be released. Point to story: set your stop losses, update them very frequently, and even though there is no guarantee to a SL, if it gets passed up “overnight” then get out asap the next morning. That and most importantly, YOU CANNOT BE AN EMOTIONAL TRADER OR THE WOLVES ON “The Street” WILL SURELY GET THE BEST OF YOU

I am currently in one of those bad trades/investments that I thought I would sell covered calls to protect the downside risk because I got caught flat footed. I have noone to blame, but myself. The stock is AMD and they are in a real down spin. I had calls sold on the stock I owned for a strike price of $9 for Dec and 10 for Jan, but the stock currently is at 7.69. So, I am in the hole 1.31 a share after factoring the money I took in for the calls. So, basically I am in the hole for 10K. The calls are almost worthless, and I hate to take the loss. Just cannot decided if I should hold or sell. Can the number 2 chip maker really go belly up? it kinda feels like in my stomach. Ugh

We had everything we owned in Morgan Stanley house mutual funds. We lost around $450,000. And to think I thought mutual funds were safe.

Growth Stocks

A disciplined, unemotional approach to stock investing is the most efficient method of portfolio management. Use objective metrics to save time in selecting the best stocks to buy and decide when to sell.

Thank you so much for your story. I am a new investor and already made my share of mistakes. AMD of about $3000. JDSU of about $600. WM of about $500. I still can’t believe AMD is where it is today…a once leader in 64bit chip even. Hope it goes back and stay up. How do you guys feel about selling a big loss for tax purposes?