Share your best/worst investment stories

[QuarterMillionMan]

Anyone care to share their best/worst investment stories. I'll share some of mines. I'll include not only my investments but also include my real estate holding and retirement funds. My best gain has got to be my one bedroom condominium property that I own in Hawaii (currently renting it out). Paid $60,000 for it in 1999, current assessed value is $160,000.


My worst investment losses would have to be my holding in both my investment accounts and retirment funds. Lost about $17,000 from a number of different stocks. Bought the ETF VXX at about $48 a share, sold at $24 (currently at $30). Also, bought ETF's and physical gold, platinum, and silver during its highest price (ie, gold at $1800). Hoping that I can at least make some of my money back should precious metals rebound. Also, had bought shares in Washington Mutual Bank when their stock prices dropped from about $20 a share to $6 a share (in 2008 or 2009) thinking it was a bargain only to have them go belly up immediately thereafter. Big mistake on my part.

[YLTL_Dan]

My current best investment return will probably come off of my house which we've renovated and will sell soon.

My worst investment is usually anytime I try to day trade!

[Chart_oasis_man]

My worst investment was a unit linked life insurance. I lost around 70% of the money on it.
I was very-very young when I entered the contract and I did not know anything about investing - I just accepted what the financial salesman told me. Actually I knew him for some time and I thought he would never sell something that will be so "harmful".
This was my worst experience with investing. But this has made me learning a lot about the topic, and today I do / try to do everything much smarter.

[sneezel22]

When I was a senior in high school, I thought I was awesome and got into some penny stocks. Most of this resulted in a net loss of about 1500 over the course of a few months.

However, I did hit the jackpot once. I was on the good side of a pump and dump; got in early and bought around 10,000 shares at around 30 cents per share. Rode it for a couple weeks as it was volatile - then came a day I will never forget.

From 10am-11:30am I had a class that was in the computer lab. I logged on to see the stock I had purchased at .30/share had risen to 2.20 in the matter of ~30 minutes. I proceeded to watch it like a hawk, to the amazement of myself and friends. I skipped lunch (11:30-12:30 to continue to monitor). At the end of my lunch period, the stock was around 3.15/share and seemingly stable. Keep in mind I was 18 years old, and just watched my account value shoot from about 3k to 30k.

At 12:30, I HAD to leave to take a US History test. It seemed like it was stable enough, so I crossed my fingers and left the computer lab. Took the test in record time. Got back to the computer around 1:00 and to find the stock had retreated down to like $1 per share. Was silly enough to convince myself it would eventually go back up; it never did. It's currently trading around 5 cents per share now.

I hit the jackpot, my one in a million chance of actually hitting it huge on a penny stock. Was too young and foolish at the time to realize how penny stocks really work. Oh well, at least its a good story!

[AccountantSalary]

Best and worst investment in the span of one day. In the crazy 80s, I invested about $20,000 in America OnLine options on the advice of an investment guru. That very day because of continually rising AOL prices, my options were suddenly worth $200,000+. This was before online banking but there was phone automation, so I tried to sell at the height of the price. Due to a large amount of call traffic, it took them forever to process my order, so that by the time they did (only about an hour), the price had dropped so much that I lost my $20,000 stake.

[gostumpy]

My worst... Bought a 2004 Honda Jazz Scooter brand new for $3100...

Sold it this summer with 7km on it for $1200

[qadar]

My worst... Bought a 2004 Honda Jazz Scooter brand new for $3100...

Sold it this summer with 7km on it for $1200

Don't know what are thinking when buying the scooter.I'm still looking for good investment..

[Gina23]

Best:

Bought my current home in 2009 for 275,000.

Current appraised value is 369,500. I expect it to continue to rise as the neighborhood just instantiated a STEM school and the city put 2 million into renovating our neighborhood "main street" not to mention the 12 new bars/restaurants/shops that have opened in the last half of year.



Worst:

I paid an investment rep at Edward Jones to give me crap advice for about 7 years.

[Slug]

My worst investment losses would have to be my holding in both my investment accounts and retirment funds. Lost about $17,000 from a number of different stocks. Bought the ETF VXX at about $48 a share, sold at $24 (currently at $30).

For 2012...

Still holding VXX. I was expecting lots more volatility going into the end of the year. Sitting on thousands in losses on it. It's actually a semi-decent hedge on a cataclysmic event, but mostly it just leaves me feeling dumb. Also stuck with ZNGA. Really hoping their online gambling piece works out.

AAPL was really good to me. I got in multiple times at good prices and then rode them up selling out using trailing stop orders on 4 or 5% drops. Then just buying back in. Currently up about 6% on my latest holdings. Only a small position b/c fiscal cliff made a larger position feel like gambling (see above).

[97guns]

my investing intuition has not led to any big loss, i had property in las vegas that i got out of right before the crash, sat on the money and am now reinvested in real estate at post crash prices.

my biggest gains came from home depot, worked there for 4 years during the dot com run up and left with 1000+ shares at $80 a pop

[MoneyTips4U]

Best and Worst Investment

I haven't made a lost of investments in my short life, but here we go.

Worse Investment: Bought a Natural Gas Stock at $20.00, and sold at $18.00. (Not exactly a horror story).

Best: Bought Silver ETF at $26, and sold at $31, not a huge profit, but profit.

Penny Stock Story: I remember buying about 2,000 shares of a penny stock at 5 cents a share. I didn't want to lose too much money. I bought it right before a rebound (it went up to 10 cents in one day) I should have sold and made about a 100% profit, but that was the first penny stock I ever had, so I held on to it. I made a profit off of it, albeit smaller than I would have if I had sold earlier.

-MoneyTips4U

[jasonbinary]

The worst, worst investment I ever made was one that I thoroughly researched. As a matter of fact, my business partner and I spent almost a year researching it. It was a company in our city that collects investor money, and loans it out on real estate development projects. Forty-five years and they had never lost a dollar of investor money.

We pooled client's money (with their full permission of course) and invested. A year later the CEO of the company committed suicide and the company filed bankruptcy... what a mess. The good news - our pooled assets have collateral in real estate assets. The bad news - it takes a long time and a lot of money to foreclose on the properties, pay attorneys, and wait for lawsuits to settle.

Legally I was not allowed to have my own money pooled with clients in this investment. However, it will end up costing me far more than almost any single client investment; hundreds of thousands over the next five to seven years that it will take to unwind it. Ugh. By far the worst investment I've ever made.