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i_was_taught_2b_cautious

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fromtheshires

I was offered the chance to purchase shares in my company 5 years ago. It wasnt a floated company so I thought better of it as you couldnt sell them on if you left and the company would only buy them back at what you paid for them when you left. This was effectively loaning the company money at £0 interest so I decided against it. 5 years later the company gets purchased and all shares are purchased back at 10x the original purchase value. I could have paid my mortgage off

Its taught me that sometimes you need to take a gamble as it may pay off.

talexuser

The worst was probably many years ago now, investing in a fund that had performance perhaps too good to be true. It turned out to be due to manager fraud. The fund was taken over, the fund house had to sell out and lose the bad reputation name, the manager turned up in court in female clothes with a mental breakdown defense, and my investment was halved on the buy out.

The most recent was investing in a fund on the recommendation of Hargreaves Lansdown without the very long term record, or ALL the alternative performance searches I usually do (the graph looked good!). It's lost twice as much as my equivalents so will have to wait longer to get back to break even. Swings and roundabouts... but don't believe HL.

Kendall80

Buying into an oil company ( Afren - a sizeable FTSE 250 listed company) and then 'averaging down' as the price fell further. Unfortunately... it fell to 0 - went into administration. I lost £5000.


Secondly; IG - specifically not cashing in when I was up. Initial investment of £500 became £900 which 1 week (many small bets) later became £9


Lesson learned - stick to funds in S&S ISA and savings/current accounts.

wary

Back in 2008 (or maybe 2009) ... NOT buying a shed-load of Barclays shares at 50p and selling them a few weeks later at £3.80 ...

kidmugsy

Biggest mistakes: actions not taken.

Lesson: it's easy for the private investor to be distracted from his financial affairs by other matters.

Phaelok

Back in 2007/08 I had the opportunity to buy RBS shares at 10p each but decided against it given the crash and felt it was far too risky.

Today I look back thinking I made one of the worst decisions ever. I was thinking of investing £9k in them at the time. Today they are circa £2.38 a share....

Nocto

Back in 2002 or 03 I opened my first online share dealing account. I bought and sold a few ftse 100 shares trying to make quick capital gains (over days or weeks). After dealing costs I didn’t really make much, and luckily didn’t lose much either.

Then I bought a book about trading ‘penny shares’ and decided it was time to get more adventurous… What could possibly go wrong..?!

Anyway, with book firmly in hand and having read a ‘share tip’ in a magazine, I decided to invest in a small AIM listed pharmaceutical company which was apparently developing something which would of course change the world and make billions!

Fortunately I only invested £500 (as various books I read had drummed it into me about not investing more that you can afford to lose), as the share price promptly started to drop. I panicked and sold my shares a few weeks later for about £200.

First lesson learned - don’t get greedy!

A few years later I looked up the company again to see how it was doing, and wasn’t surprised to find that it no longer existed. However, digging a little deeper I discovered that it had been bought out and had I held on to my shares I would have nearly doubled my money.

Second lesson learned - investing is a long term business…

I now only invest for the long term in unadventurous unit trusts (my current portfolio hasn’t changed much in five years).

With hindsight it was probably the best £300 I ever lost.

Malthusian

Back in 2007/08 I had the opportunity to buy RBS shares at 10p each but decided against it given the crash and felt it was far too risky.

Today I look back thinking I made one of the worst decisions ever. I was thinking of investing £9k in them at the time. Today they are circa £2.38 a share....

Your mistake there is to overlook that RBS split its stock 1:10 in 2012. If you'd bought shares in 2007/08 at 10p they would now only be worth 2.4x your investment, not 24x. Sounds like a good return, but it's not outstanding considering you would have been punting £9,000 on a bankrupt state-owned enterprise. The return merely reflected the risk.

Lesson: If you think you've made a catastrophic mistake, look closer. Unless you are captain of a nuclear submarine it probably wasn't as bad as you think.

Phaelok

Malthusian wrote: »

Your mistake there is to overlook that RBS split its stock 1:10 in 2012. If you'd bought shares in 2007/08 at 10p they would now only be worth 2.4x your investment, not 24x. Sounds like a good return, but it's not outstanding considering you would have been punting £9,000 on a bankrupt state-owned enterprise. The return merely reflected the risk.

Lesson: If you think you've made a catastrophic mistake, look closer. Unless you are captain of a nuclear submarine it probably wasn't as bad as you think.

Thanks - all of a sudden I don't feel as bad :rotfl:

skid112

I bought RBS at 10.5p, sold them at 24 a few weeks later, however my worst mistake was averaging a different share all the way down from 3.72 to a penny share, still owned and 15K down. hey ho