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Your worst investing moves made over the years...
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2011 Jan 30, 2:52pm 16,037 views 51 comments
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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.
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
B.A.C.A.H.
2011 Aug 26, 1:10am
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!"
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What are some of your worst experiences? I am curious about % losses as well as absolute amounts due to bad investments. What were they and when were they made. What did you learn from it?
#investing