Your Biggest Investment Losses

adindas

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!

The valuation of the individual stock change all the time. Depending on how the business is doing, revenue/loss they make, management. Geo political could also play a significant role such as we see in China and Venezuela.

The Analyst price target of Lloyds Banking Group LLOY is around GBX 60 with Lowest PT Band is around GBX50. With the current share price of GBX47.45, it might be worthy to invest time to start a full DDs for someone who want to open or add position in LLOY. But just be aware that this PT is not 100% accurate so DYOR is very important.

With the current stock price, the chance it will be back to £11+ is very low. It will need very big catalysts and it will need to happen multiple times to bring it back to that level. And it might also take a long time to be back to that level.

The problem with the Banking stock is that their executive pays, bonus and dividend culture even the business are making a huge loss.

IMO, when investing in individual stock, it is important to set up a the stop loss to minimise your loss. It is explained in many of trading literatures, articles, Books, Videos.

I did own LLOY stock so I could speak from personal experience.

ispookie666

Lost around 3K and another 4K with BT and Centrica; been holding them for 6 ish years 

fly-catchers

£12000 worth of Halifax/HBOS shares reduced to £500 as lloyds shares! I made the fatal mistake of thinking the loss is only on paper until you sell them. So thought I would hold fast until they recovered! For individual shares with one company that was not a good idea/ Lesson learnt!   

JustAnotherSaver

Started getting in to Trading212 earlier this year. Only investing 3 figure amounts so not as much as some. Just having a bit of a play and seeing if I can do anything. My serious investing is in the form of funds - VLS, HSBC Global etc, not shares.

Argo Blockchain was one that stung me. Put a chunk in probably about 3 days after the peak. Fell off quite a bit.

There were some others that I even forget their name.

GamesWorkshop or whatever it was called, thought that'd do well. I was gambling on the 'past performance...' which didn't work out. What they say is very true with that line.

Others worked out. Put 3 figure wedges in to Thungela & bailed not very long after it started dipping.

Haven't put any fresh cash in there for a while now. Think I'll just leave it with what's in there, see when I decide to bail on the lot & call it an experience and not do it again.

strawb_shortcake

JustAnotherSaver said:

Started getting in to Trading212 earlier this year. Only investing 3 figure amounts so not as much as some. Just having a bit of a play and seeing if I can do anything. My serious investing is in the form of funds - VLS, HSBC Global etc, not shares.

Argo Blockchain was one that stung me. Put a chunk in probably about 3 days after the peak. Fell off quite a bit.

There were some others that I even forget their name.

GamesWorkshop or whatever it was called, thought that'd do well. I was gambling on the 'past performance...' which didn't work out. What they say is very true with that line.

Others worked out. Put 3 figure wedges in to Thungela & bailed not very long after it started dipping.

Haven't put any fresh cash in there for a while now. Think I'll just leave it with what's in there, see when I decide to bail on the lot & call it an experience and not do it again.

My Husband is still annoyed with me that I didn't let him invest in Games workshop back when  the price was low. To be fair we were barely into saving nevermind investing in those days 

adindas

annabanana82 said:

My Husband is still annoyed with me that I didn't let him invest in Games workshop back when  the price was low. To be fair we were barely into saving nevermind investing in those days 

Well imo, it is definitely the right decision. You will only invest the money you could effort to lose, e.g., extra money to be used to invest, not the money you will use for primary need in the near future. It is the wrong mindset to only think the reward without thinking the risk you are taking, the loss you will be making.

Let alone investing into a high volatile, high risk stock when you get high chance of losing them. But high risk might also mean high reward for particular stock.

strawb_shortcake

adindas said:

annabanana82 said:

My Husband is still annoyed with me that I didn't let him invest in Games workshop back when  the price was low. To be fair we were barely into saving nevermind investing in those days 

Well imo, it is definitely the right decision. You will only invest the money you could effort to lose, e.g., extra money to be used to invest, not the money you will use for primary need in the near future.

Let alone investing into a high volatile, high risk stock when you get high chance of losing them. But high risk might also mean high reward for particular stock.

It was definitely the right decision for the time, from memory the share price has been 10-12x what he could have bought at years ago. 

But it could just have easily gone the other way, or worse gave him confidence he knew what he was doing and he went gung ho on individual share holdings

Thrugelmir

Yorkshire_Pud said:

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?

Was coerced into a shot gun marriage with HBOS. All the prior years profit and more got wiped out in settling PPI claims along with the write off's from poor lending practices pre the GFC. Was the LLoyds shareholders that paid the bill. 

demontfort

My worst lost is Nostrum Oil and Gas (NOG) £165,830 and 46 pence, the 46 pence was rubbing salt in the wound.

TadleyBaggie

Although not strictly an investment I made, I was once granted some stock options that at one point would have netted me around $100K. However the stock price started to drop but I decided to hang on to them assuming the stock price would recover...it never did and by the time the option expired they were worthless.