patrick.net

Tude says

Sitting on 100% cash since 2008. Sure, I didn’t lose any money, but I have been too terrified to do anything since the crash, even when my gut told me too. If I had done what I should have done I’d have way more in my retirement account than I need at this point. Makes me a little sick when I think about it.

You know on the other side you could have lost a lot too. I have relatives who lost their entire retirement in the crash because of how they were leveraged.

ChrisLA says

Tude says

Sitting on 100% cash since 2008. Sure, I didn’t lose any money, but I have been too terrified to do anything since the crash, even when my gut told me too. If I had done what I should have done I’d have way more in my retirement account than I need at this point. Makes me a little sick when I think about it.

You know on the other side you could have lost a lot too. I have relatives who lost their entire retirement in the crash because of how they were leveraged.

I understand this. The problem is I knew enough to get out in time, but I also knew enough to get back in (but didn't). I am always questioning my ability to know when to get out again. Right now it really is a game that should be played by people who really know the rules and how to work all the fraud and monkey business to their advantage. I know those of us that cannot keep up will just get squashed.

Tude says

I understand this. The problem is I knew enough to get out in time, but I also knew enough to get back in (but didn’t). I am always questioning my ability to know when to get out again. Right now it really is a game that should be played by people who really know the rules and how to work all the fraud and monkey business to their advantage. I know those of us that cannot keep up will just get squashed.

The way we've been doing it is we basically invest and hold forever. We do sell, but rarely, only if we think the company is really not going to be doing well. It does work out long term if investments are right. So far doing all right; knock on wood.

I could have pulled out before the crash and saved more obviously, but I'm not a day trader so wasn't going to move a bit nor I really saw the stock market crash. I didn't know housing bubble was so entrenched into everything else, kind of thought it was just localized to a specific industry. At the end didn't really matter since almost everyone did the same, and when everyone feels the crash the same way the end result has no losers or winners.

Purchased WAMU and lost all the money.

I bought an emerging market mutual fund, unnecessary and a waste. International funds have enough emerging market exposure. My only stock mistake was buying about $3k worth of Sun Micro and not selling it when it was worth about $12K or so. Oh well. Not very exciting and I didn't lose money in this account anyway. I have 99% of my financial assets in mutual funds.

"mutual fund"

'nuff said. Anyway thanks for your story...

I have made money in my other funds, no complaints here.

@kimboslice

Fair enough. I do know that about 75% of mutual funds underperform the S&P 500 index over a 5-year period. In addition they of have hefty charges. You may know something I don't about certain mutual funds in that 20% category.

I was in a short ETF (SH for the past 6 months), but I sold 2 days ago (I should have waited just 2 days)!

American in Japan says

I was in a short ETF (SH for the past 6 months), but I sold 2 days ago (I should have waited just 2 days)!

I hear you, AIJ. I usually run a put on SPY for the past year, but my last one expired mid-June. #@$!@!.

FAIRX (Fairholme Fund) with the way it is going right now. I have hopes it will rebound though.

FortWayne says

Buddy you were gambling on that one, not investing.

Wall Street financial operations? There is no "investing" there any more except by accident.

You want to invest, loan a family member the scratch they need to start that restaurant or small business.

>Wall Street financial operations? There is no "investing" there any more except by accident.

LoL!

I think mine is when I shorted F in early 2008, held the short down to around 6 or something like that but then chickened out when it went back to around 8 early in the summer.

Then later in the year it bottomed around 2.

Probably not buying Google pre-IPO when they offered up to 5k worth for 50 cents a share. Stayed away from it because it seemed like an echo the dot-com bust. Coulda retired on that one!

msilenus says

I was working at Infospace back when the dot com bubble was bursting,

I bought Infospace at something like $4 and change, and sold for $8 and change. This was what, late 90's? Definitely before the bust by a long shot. Doubled my money but I think I only had 1000 shares.

I don't have one trade that tanked, but what I *did* really screw up was the the whole dot-com thing. I was in the software business in the late 90's and was very contrarian about the dot-coms. I kept telling EVERYONE to sell their silly 'internet' stocks. I used to talk about the companies with a business plan "written on a cocktail napkin".

I was finally right but the problem was I didn't take my own advice. I had a lot of 'growth' mutual funds - I was young and pretty lazy/naive about what was actually *in* my mutual funds. Had I taken the time to look closely, I would have cashed them all out. Naturally they were full of these stocks I told people to sell.

I'm still recovering from that one.

Sybrib says

I think mine is when I shorted F in early 2008, held the short down to around 6 or something like that but then chickened out when it went back to around 8 early in the summer.

Then later in the year it bottomed around 2.

I bought F at $5, $3, and $1.74. I wish I had put every penny I owned in it. I sold at what, $9 and change. I wish I had held it longer but did ok.

Now ask me about my mutual funds (oh wait, I already posted that debacle).

American in Japan says

I was in a short ETF (SH for the past 6 months), but I sold 2 days ago (I should have waited just 2 days)!

You do realize that SH is not intended for long-term investments and that you weren't really shorting anything, right?

Yes I do. It simulates a short.

American in Japan says

Yes I do. It simulates a short.

Not if you hold it for 6 months.

It only simulates a short if you hold it short-term with relatively low volatility -- its returns are based on the *daily* change. Because of tracking error and volatility drag, it definitely does not simulate a short over the long term.

SH is one of the better ones in terms of these factors, but its tracking error and drag is greatly increased in times of high volatility, such as now. The tracking error and drag are still not as bad as the leveraged versions, however.

Inverse funds are definitely not the same as shorting and do not simulate shorting.

billy269 says

FAIRX (Fairholme Fund) with the way it is going right now. I have hopes it will rebound though.

Isn't Fairholme one of the biggest shareholders of BofA? If I remember correctly, FAIRX bought large amounts of all the banksters -- Shitty, Goldman, and Morgan Stanley, also Notorious AIG, and even things like CIT and certain property managers like Brookfield. Basically, everything that they thought was distressed and possibly oversold. I'm assuming their theory was "at least one of these companies has to do well, right?"

What made you buy them?

SIRI.

Not very glamorous I know, but back when Howard was in contract renegotiation and they were at 8-12 cents a share. I seriously thought about it...

$1000/0.12c = 83333 shares

Todays price of $1.72
83333 * 1.72 = $143,332.76

I am out of SH now.

Vicente,
don't worry about it. Not doing something is not really a bad investment move. Because it's not a move at all. Missed opportunity, of course. But that is a different question.
If we had to list our worst missed opportunities, the list would be so much longer.

For me, it'd start with my college days when I declined an offer from a Swedish coed on her way back home to Europe, to share a hotel room "to share expenses" near NYC airport during a flights layover. Wanted to perserve my small amount of cash for something else so I spent the night at a relative's house in the area.

I told my professor about it after I had returned home to California. He laughed out loud at me and told me something like, "you dummy, that's what your credit cards are for!"