Your Biggest Investment Losses

RogerIrvine

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6110470/liquidate-entire-portfolio-until-virus-is-over

And still it goes on. But many have doubled their investments in the 21-months since the low-point of covid panic. Those who sat it out will be unlikely to catch up.

Dead_keen

None.  I just set my pension to buy a diversified low cost tracker and pretty much forgot to look at it again until last year.

RogerIrvine

Good strategy Dead_Keen !! 
  

Yorkshire_Pud

Halifax shares bought around £8 after they had dropped from £11 thinking they would go back up. Now the proud owner of Lloyds bank (that were Halifax) shares worth around 45p each! Loss about £2000.

As others have said diversify. This lesson has cost me £2000 and realise I don’t have the knowledge skill or intent to be a single stock picker relying on emotion and thinking lazily it will just go back up. So wrong.

Will Lloyds ever go back up?! How can a share valued at £11 become a share worth 45p and the bank is still a credible viable concern?EDIT just done some research and of course it was the banking crisis of 2007 that caused the massive drop and the ensuing Lloyds take over, thereafter flatlined below £1 ever since, even sold at around 74p in 2017 when uk government sold off its stake so even those investors have seen a 30p a share drop since then. Found a news story from 2017 about whether they were a good share to buy and someone called Woodward was saying they are a good buy and others saying worth it for the good dividends. Thereafter Woodward funds  went south big time and Lloyds stopped the dividend for a time I think.

Just shows the experts are just doing their job at any particular time and minimising their risks while extolling others to take risks with their money!

oz0707

Losing big on single shares has been a valuable lesson from me that I'm unlikely to have learnt other than first hand. Good news is I've never used funds I couldn't afford to lose. Also got lucky on some decent shares and made good money. I wouldn't ever say never again but for now I'm all about regularly dripping into a low cost tracker. 

Scrudgy

I lost about 70% on Sirius Minerals, which for me was about £1500. However, it appeared many people lost their life savings and pension pots on that story. At least everyone got something back when Anglo American stepped in and bought the shares up cheaply, so not a total loss.

oz0707

Scrudgy said:

I lost about 70% on Sirius Minerals, which for me was about £1500. However, it appeared many people lost their life savings and pension pots on that story. At least everyone got something back when Anglo American stepped in and bought the shares up cheaply, so not a total loss.

Yeh that was a loss of mine too. Saga has been another and cini world the latest. Although non sold at a loss happy to hold and hope. 

bigfer

Couldn't resist the lure of Patagonia Gold. Given the nod from people at work so I invested 3k. At one point I was up 2k until it would appear they hit F All and eventually the price dropped to B All and I was left with as Jim Bowen would say, my bus fare home ( only one stop at that).
I also wasted a grand on the Daily Mail tip of Beacon Hill Resources.....then there was Active Energy, a Biotech firm whose name escapes me and Renovo whose trial for some anti scar treatment went badly wrong.
......I use an IFA now who has fortunately sorted me out.....I nearly went all in on Clinton Cards too.....

redux

Loss of all of £500 with a split capital investment trust managed by Aberdeen

There are articles on the internet now suggesting things like there was some compensation to the zero dividend preference share holders. Not me.

I just found this, which says some claimants were sent packs with the application forms omitted.

https://www.independent.co.uk/money/spend-save/aberdeen-says-sorry-to-splits-losers-as-claim-forms-go-missing-223431.html

I didn't even get that.

When I asked, years ago by phone, why they'd never contacted me, someone in their customer services denied all knowledge of the trust I'd named, which certainly had been managed by them. Instead I was given an address of a firm in Exeter.

That same person was however able to look up my account with Aberdeen and identify that there was still a few pence of uninvested cash in it.. To my question how come I've got an account in your investment trust savings scheme if you didn't manage this trust, no comment.

I was promised they would write to me at my new address, which they confirmed I'd already given them twice, about that spare cash. This has never happened, so they've presumably still got it.

A couple of years ago I found an article eulogising Chris Fishwick, who had recently passed away, by a journalist friend of his. The author ventured to suggest Fishwick had been unfairly shouldered with blame.

I drafted a reply to him, but never sent it, pointing out Fishwick Gilbert et al had been handsomely rewarded with millions for converting people's supposedly relatively safe investment to dross, and hadn't even the decency to admit it to me or give back my remainder 37 pence.

Separately to all that, I had some holding in Jupiter European, when this was a split capital trust. Ahead of its wind-up in 2000, Aberdeen proposed a rollover trust, and the trust directors recommended it. Instead I elected to stay with Jupiter's replacement. This has been one of my best investments.

Scottex99

Yorkshire_Pud said:

Halifax shares bought around £8 after they had dropped from £11 thinking they would go back up. Now the proud owner of Lloyds bank (that were Halifax) shares worth around 45p each! Loss about £2000.

As others have said diversify. This lesson has cost me £2000 and realise I don’t have the knowledge skill or intent to be a single stock picker relying on emotion and thinking lazily it will just go back up. So wrong.

Will Lloyds ever go back up?! How can a share valued at £11 become a share worth 45p and the bank is still a credible viable concern?EDIT just done some research and of course it was the banking crisis of 2007 that caused the massive drop and the ensuing Lloyds take over, thereafter flatlined below £1 ever since, even sold at around 74p in 2017 when uk government sold off its stake so even those investors have seen a 30p a share drop since then. Found a news story from 2017 about whether they were a good share to buy and someone called Woodward was saying they are a good buy and others saying worth it for the good dividends. Thereafter Woodward funds  went south big time and Lloyds stopped the dividend for a time I think.

Just shows the experts are just doing their job at any particular time and minimising their risks while extolling others to take risks with their money!

I left Edinburgh for Spain around 2014. Had worked at Hbos/Lloyds for around 8 years. When I quit I had to take out around £6k from my sharesave with an option to buy at 46p or something.

Was totally gutted that when it matured it would probably be worth around 3 or 4 quid per share. Was back in Edinburgh with mates recently who still have theirs running years later and the price is like 36p or something atrocious