Bad Investments

Everybody's done it. Here's mine:

Vanguard US Growth. OUCH. Sold a little over a year ago, invested monthly for 4 years from about 1997 to 2002. OUCH.

Quaker Oats. Bought in 1994 for the sole purpose of making a quick buck on rumors they were going to be bought by pepsi. They bought Snapple for way too much to avoid the buyout, the stock dumped, I sold. A cheap stock market lesson at a young age.

'Dog of the Dow', aka 'The Foolish Four', which was a theory that if you bought the top yielding 4 or 5 compnents of the DOW, that you'd beat the S&P soundly b/c that what had happened for like a billion years on the past. A great lesson in data mining.

 

I guess I'm the only one. :imagestor

 

i forget how much dad poured into Johnson & Wales for me...

 

Nope..I was in WCOM quite heavily..that was one investment where my research did no good whatsoever, since their financials were fraudulent...I've got a lot more, but it's more fun to tout success than dwell on the painful ones.

 

My only real loser was Corning, and I was given the stock when it was at it's peak at 100 or so, dropped to 2... that was fun.

Amazingly, I think I've made money on everything else (well, let's not count stock options that I had to let expire). Sometimes FAR less than I should have when a lucky pick gets REALLY lucky but I cashed early, but still positive.

Of course, it helps when you just dump money into a lifecycle fund. These babies make following the standard good advice of money magnates everywhere automatic. You just dump money into a fund with very low fees that is managed according to the date you expect to retire and draw on it - very aggressive when it's 30 years to target, very conservative at the end. So mine is aimed at 2040, and is doing a consistent 10% for the last 5+ years, the ones closing in 2020 are doing more like 7%.

 

I dated the same girl throughout college. When I think of the missed opportunities now, damn. Does that count?

 

Not so much a bad investment but a caustionary tale.

Dad, bless his heart, decided to "gift" me a nice sum of his old company stock as a wedding present.

Well I got my first lesson in gifting. When I sold some of the stock for a down payment on our first house I found out about cost basis. Turns out since it was gifted I had to take HIS basis on the stock and not the price it was gifted. His basis was .50. I sold the stock at $35. Capital gains out the ass.

I am now just holding the remainder for the 1.30 dividend and not touching the stock.

 

I have more than I can even begin to mention...Never put a bunch into them, but (especially when I was younger), I used to love to buy teh speculative stuff. Probably about even on those...lost what I made.

 

Ciena

 

Siebels Bruce Insurance before Hurricane Andrew