Your Biggest Investment Losses

Saga

highet said:

railtrack, halifax, alliance and leicester, marks and spencer, woodford - invested in a few dodos over the years!!!

All well known names too.

Ash_Pole

I bought a bunch of rock-solid safe income shares about 14 years ago including Barclays Bank, RBS, and Premier Foods. 

This doesn't really count but "the one that got away" was in 2014 when I thought a punt of £1,000 on something called "BitCoin" might be worth a go. I opened the account but couldn't work out how to fund it as they didn't take credit cards, and I gave up. I still have that wallet   

DireEmblem

Some good ones on this thread.  Difficult to pick a top one, but will go with:

1. Renting for 11 years after completing uni.
2. Not starting to invest when I got my first job after Uni.
3. Buying shares in Hurricane Energy, with its billion barrel oil field that didnt exist.

But what it has taught me, is I will teach any little DE's that come along the power of investing.

Thrugelmir

Saga said:

highet said:

railtrack, halifax, alliance and leicester, marks and spencer, woodford - invested in a few dodos over the years!!!

All well known names too.

BP was a rock steady dividend stock until the Deepwater Horizon disaster. No accounting for the unexpected. Accelerated information flow has made market reactions sharper and more pronounced. 

sevenhills

Saga said:

All well known names too.

Companies doing work for the Government are much safer, like Carillion and Interserve 

Thrugelmir

sevenhills said:

Saga said:

All well known names too.

Companies doing work for the Government are much safer, like Carillion and Interserve 

Anybody investing directly in Tesla must be constantly worrying as to what Musk is going to tweet next.  

DireEmblem

NannaH said:

I bought into the Seraphim Space fund earlier this year and the value pretty much halved the next day 🙄. 

 I only invested £500 and I’m hoping it will start to do better.

I keep dithering over whether to sell some/all of my holding in L&G global tech,  it’s done, and continues to do, very well so I just keep hanging on and I still drip feed £50 a month in.  It’s returned 124% for me. 

The Seraphim Space fund hasn't been that volatile, its only dropped what 10% in a day?

Still overpriced for what it is imo.

jamesd

I placed some money with a peer to peer lending firm that was listed in the FCA's database of regulated firms as regulated by them. It wasn't and seems to have been long firm fraud abetted by the FCA. Ultimate outcome unknown but could result in a loss of up to £32,000 with the FCA denying responsibility for the wrong information it was providing.

In another case I sold some shares with the intention of rebuying inside an ISA. The sale happened before I'd completed the rebuy so I lost out on a doubling of the investment. I did really well in exercising options before a previous deal in the same underlying business not long before that got me a considerably higher price than otherwise. I exercised in the window between the deal being agreed and it being announced... which meant that my deal attracted the attention of just about anyone concerned with possible insider trading .. as well as a check by the administrators to remind me that I'd need to be sure to accompany the money I'd sent with the properly completed paperwork soon, without disclosing why they were reminding me. They probably knew of the deal and that I'd regret it if I missed the paperwork window.

Another case was potential insider trading where as a friend of the family of a senior lawyer/banker I learned of a bank buyout/merger being arranged over a weekend because I happened to visit during that time and he was unusually not at home. I knew enough not to disclose or trade based on the information but he kindly ensured that I knew it'd be a really bad idea. I worked close Wall Street at the time... Many years later I had the potential opportunity to make money when his bank was being taken over and I knew from past discussions that saying he and his other seniors at the bank hated the prospective buyer would be an understatement. The deal fell through.

Remember to diversify as well as follow the law. Diversification is what protects you when something very bad and very unexpected happens. It's particularly important if you're investing in individual shares, as many investors in FTSE100 firms have learned over the years when their shares became worthless.

Alexland

jamesd said:

Another case was potential insider trading where as a friend of the family of a senior lawyer/banker I learned of a bank buyout/merger being arranged over a weekend because I happened to visit during that time and he was unusually not at home. I knew enough not to disclose or trade based on the information but he kindly ensured that I knew it'd be a really bad idea.

About a decade ago I had some detailed inside information from a conversation with family friends that a publicly listed company was about to be taken over and was decent enough not to take action so just watched as the situation unfolded as expected and the share price rocketed. It was a small company with low trade volumes so there was a fair chance of getting caught especially as I probably wasn't the only one who had been told.

bulltraderpt

Worse investments for me are Physical Gold and Silver, both down against my Fiat currency trading. Fortunately I never went full tin foil hat, so am happy to hold.