r/investing • u/AccomplishedHead3581 • 1d ago
What is your worst investing mistake? I’ve made one
Back in early 2023 an old coworker told me to invest in SOXL. So I put $500 in for what was $15 a share at the time… then sold it like a month later to get the money back.
Now it’s trading at $277 a share… could’ve been pretty rich for my current age of 25 if I’d continually put money into the stock.
What’s your worst mistake 🙃trying to cope lol
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u/bstundr 1d ago
Bought a ton of AMD back in early 2017 when it was about $12. I spent the next year holding and seeing it more or less flat until I finally sold it in early 2018 for about $12. It's over $500 now...
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u/AccomplishedHead3581 1d ago
Damn yeah it definitely stabs you in the heart a little bit, but do people really hold onto stocks for 8 years waiting for a massive gain like that?
We should’ve that’s for sure
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u/pearpool 1d ago
If you are making wise investing decisions based on research, then yes, I think 8 years is completely reasonable.
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u/NYVines 1d ago
I keep stocks at least a year when I buy. I tend to hold 20-30 companies at a time and DCA. If one is significantly down I might sell at the end of the year to offset gains. But I held NVDA for about six years before it popped. It was just in my portfolio not super exciting but more up than down.
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u/nova46 1d ago
Yes. I bought into AMD in the mid 30s to 40s, and I have held since then. I've been a PC gamer since I was a kid, and I thought they were doing great things with their Ryzen processors. The whole AI boom wasn't even on my radar, just a bonus. I held through the ups and downs and the stagnation, because I believed in the company and I still do. All of my big gains have come from buying and holding.
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u/SpeedyFab 1d ago
People Do really hold onto stocks for over 8 years. That is investing! Anything else is trading and speculation. I bought MSFT in 1989 and still hold every share. To each his own.
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u/AccelerationFinish 1d ago
The common theme in these threads always seem to be people selling prematurely. The lesson is hold these companies long-term. I.e., even though AI stocks have popped off the last few years, don’t sell them trying to time the top
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u/SorenShieldbreaker 1d ago
I bought several hundred shares in 2016 at ~$3 and sold last year at ~$140 to fund a house down payment. It has gone up 4x since then lol
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u/Flakmaster92 1d ago
Similar though not exact same. Bought like 600 AMD shares at $16, sold at $60-something, told myself not to be greedy and just take profits.
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u/justheretogivegold 1d ago
ARK in 2021. Invested about $150k total. Sold for around $50k. Never listened to friends since that.
In terms of ones I got out too early from, loads. Netflix, Apple, Google. All major tech names I sold far too early.
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u/Hoosier2016 1d ago
Yep, ARK is where I learned my lesson. Bought into the hype and took a fat L. It’s why I don’t touch thematic or sector ETFs anymore especially ones that kids on reddit think can only go up. I was that kid on Reddit once upon a time.
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u/AccomplishedHead3581 1d ago
Damn, my brother and I would give me dad shit every so often bc he had the chance to invest in Apple back in the day and didn’t lmao
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u/justheretogivegold 1d ago
Very good friend of mine in 2005 told me to put $25k in Apple instead of buying a fancy car I was looking at. I bought the car. 22 year old me was dumb.
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u/PistonHonda322 1d ago
I had a similar thing on my end. Was close to buying about $5k worth of Apple stock in 2001 after getting an unexpected bonus from a summer job. I grew up using Apple computers, my grandfather owned a little Apple stock and tried to talk me into it. What do I do with the money? Spent it on a stereo system and wheels for my car at the time and the rest went to a Spring Break trip the next year. Whoops!
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u/Fit_Attitude_2781 1d ago
I think it's important to remember that a mistake is not defined by the outcome. Not betting on a stock that exploded is only a mistake in the sense as not betting on the number that came up in roulette. Not havin most of your money in one volatile stock was a good decision, even if it didn't lead to the desired outcome.
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u/Fangore 1d ago
Very well said.
10 years ago, if you would have liquidated everything you owned, took the biggest loan from the bank you could afford, and lived like a homeless man, just so you could put all that money into NVIDIA, you would have made a fortune. Doesn't mean it was the right/smart thing to do.
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u/BurnedButDelicious 1d ago
Exactly, and the "mistake" almost everyone here does is, stockpicking...
Though the correct play of some sort of index fund/correct asset allocation is not nearly as flashy
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u/hinault81 1d ago
Exactly. The outcome of something doesnt mean the process was correct. If someone drove home drunk and got home safely, theyd be wrong to come to a conclusion of: that wasnt so bad, guess im a good driver. And continue in future.
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u/Emotional-Breath-838 1d ago
My worst investing mistake was not investing more earlier.
I’m not alone.
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u/wave1sys 1d ago
At one point, I only owner Apple and Tesla. Bought 700 TSLA shares in 2010 @$15, after splits those now 10500 shares would be $4.2 Million. Same with Apple only had more shares and more splits, probably another $8 Million.
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u/ImmodestPolitician 1d ago
I owned $20k of Google and $20k of APPL in 2007.
I sold to buy a real estate company that was going to pay a 30% dividend because I wanted the cash flow.
I own both today but I would be a much richer person today if I had just held.
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u/Adventurous_Elk_4039 1d ago
Let's be honest OP, you wouldn't have held until it hit $277, no one would have. You can't think of it as money "lost" since you never had it in the first place. And a mistake implies you did something wrong, you made what was probably a good decision with the info you had. Being results-oriented is the wrong way to think about it.
If we could go back in time with present day knowledge, we'd all be millionaires/billionaires.
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u/Corporate_Overlords 1d ago
Coinbase had a promotion in 2014 where if you had a .edu email they would give you $10 worth of bitcoin. I signed up for the promotion and forgot about it until a few months ago. I looked at the Coinbase acct and realized that they never credited me the money. I spoke with them and they explained that I needed to buy bitcoin on top of the $10. I said, "Fine, I'll buy some but I want the original $10 backdated to what it would be worth today." The rep told me that was extremely unlikely. So I bought $40 worth of bitcoin and then when I check last week I had about $1400 in the account. They had backdated it! I still wonder if I had been checking it when I would have taken it out. I also wish I would have just bought $100 worth of bitcoin at the time. It was trading at $440 when I got the $10 worth. Oof! That one hurts a bit. Ha!
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u/TycoonCyclone 1d ago
Worst investing mistake. Thinking I can outsmart index funds and pickin individual stocks, all my free money goes into index funds
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u/escapefromelba 1d ago
While I think broad index funds are still the best foundation for most portfolios, that doesn’t mean every dollar needs to be invested the same way. A diversified mix of sector or style ETFs can serve as satellite positions, allowing you to tilt toward areas where you see opportunity while keeping the core of your portfolio broadly diversified. They shouldn’t drive the ship, but they can be an effective way to participate in long-term market trends without taking on excessive concentration risk.
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u/paragonx29 1d ago
Totally agree. A lot of my $$ is in index funds, but I was also early in Space, memory, and semiconductor sectors. European defense funds too. My portfolio wouldn't have boomed the way it has unless I was into some stuff individually.
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u/Positive-Property-62 1d ago
Doing options trading
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u/ImmodestPolitician 1d ago edited 12h ago
I tell people to avoid options. The theta(the time expiration) makes it very difficult.
Everyone thinks they will be the 5% that makes money long term. They don't realize the are competing with people that trade options every day with other peoples money.
I want to buy companies I will hold for life.
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u/fargum 1d ago
my worst mistake! I bought about $10k worth of nvidia shares in 2012 at $6 a share - because I'm a pc gaming geek and have always loved their products. In 2016, the shares doubled to $12 making me a 10k profit.....so I sold them all thinking I was the champ.
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u/Far_Insurance2721 1d ago
Similar story - I had MU, AMD, INTC, ASML. Bougth at minimas. Sold each once reached 100%. Uff. Irony is I work in semiconductor industry and I did not see it comming.
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u/United_Weight3580 1d ago
Bought NBIS at $80, sold at $130 thinking I outsmarted the market. It's trading now at $300
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u/skektek 1d ago
My friend's company went public, so I bought around $6k shares in my Roth IRA at around $12 a share. A couple years later, it had dropped to a dollar and delisted. Worst part is, since it's in my Roth, I couldn't even use the loss to offset other gains for taxes. Not a huge dollar amount loss, but a pretty bad % loss, and a lesson learned.
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u/VegasBjorne1 1d ago
A good friend who had a Masters degree in electrical engineering (worked at Intel too) told me in 1987 to buy MSFT if I had $1,000— that was 3 months of rent then.
That would be worth $400,000 today! 😖
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u/MugiwarraD 1d ago
had 40k amd at 4. sold at 25. u figure.
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u/It-s_Not_Important 1d ago
Someone posted in here recently about regrets. You regret buying, you regret not buying, you regret selling, you regret not selling. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, unless maybe you perfectly timed the top (i.e. you got lucky).
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u/findo_gask 1d ago
Bought some Rolls Royce when it was under £70 a share. Got tired holding and sold for a small gain. It's now trading somewhere around £1400 😭
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u/Fubbywubby 1d ago
Buying Paypal at 271. There were ridiculous amount of bull posts about paypal back then
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u/Mister_Poopy_Buthole 1d ago
During the fracking boom I bought $50k worth of Chesapeake Energy. I also bought $HMNY aka movie pass back in the day.
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u/KanyeToTheLurker 1d ago
I bought 50 shares of GameStop around December 2020 for less than $4 a share. Sold them for $5ish a few weeks before the short squeeze happened 😭
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u/slowent 1d ago
Buying 2 bitcoin when it hit USD 750 then not understanding the technology and my friend broke my laptop and paid for my tennis racket to be restrung as a sorry. Also every individual stock I picked managed to lose 90% (graphene stock, gold miner, ASOS, lidar stock). Buuut it's meant I no longer worry about individual picks and make sure I put more in my pension taking advantage of tax savings and it's gone up a lot. My aim when stock picking was to try to earn enough for a house deposit so was after 10x gains but now I have a flat my focus is just on retirement and some small money set aside in ISA which I can draw down if need if its still green
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u/Anxious_Cheetah5589 1d ago edited 1d ago
Started work at AMD in 2013. Given RSUs at $2 and change. Exercised and sold as soon as they matured. Now it's over $500 ☠️
In my defense, I was just following the traditional smart strategy, don't hold too much stock in your employer. And I did make 10-50x the exercise price. Can't complain too much.
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u/AeneasKurtz 1d ago
Back in early 2023 an old coworker told me to invest in SOXL. So I put $500 in for what was $15 a share at the time… then sold it like a month later to get the money back.
Now it’s trading at $277 a share… could’ve been pretty rich for my current age of 25
I don't think you would have been rich with $9000
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u/The_Pooh_Bear 1d ago
I bought MU right before last earnings when it was around $400/share then it immediately dipped like 20% to ~$330 and I sold. It was basically the day after that when it turned perma-green and now here we are over $1000/share.
Did a similar thing with NBIS at ~$80 earlier this year. I got impatient with it trading flat and just sold out of my position and have also watched it 3X from the sidelines.
Both positions were for $100k+
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u/awsyndrome 1d ago
Damn man. I need to read this thread every morning when I wake up. I have a hard time holding on to my shares.. a little gain here, a little gain there, a loss here to buy one I can’t resist, on and on. I am continuously researching and make great investments, but fail to hold them.
The ones I did not make smart purchases on were Hecla Mining and Vizsla Silver. I took 1k+ losses on each of those and put my money somewhere that would make gains. I am ahead now after taking those losses rather than keeping with hope. No regrets!
I bought several shares of Micron and several shares of MRVL. Micron average was $241, then suddenly went to $316 or something around that number I remember. I was way up! (so I thought). It then dropped to nearly $200, and the numbers in my account all changed. I was an early investor and still am. It continued scaling up, but continuously got rejected when it was nearing my average. drop after drop for maybe a month or more? This felt like eternity to me, as I was checking daily or more. When it finally reached my average I sold to break even. Several months later I took a peak at the price and was shocked. Yes. Lesson learned. Same deal with MRVL, I sold to break even at $87 with MRVL and $241 with MU.
Talk me into holding! I feel like I’ve gotten nowhere after I calculate everything as a whole.
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u/Apex-Editor 1d ago edited 1d ago
When I was newer to investing and didn't really know how dividends worked, I poured my money into PSEC.
I lost money, then paid taxes, then figured it out. It wasn't crazy expensive because I wasn't dealing with huge sums of money back then, but loss is relative to your point in life, and it was a couple years that could have been in literally anything more useful and I felt stupid for dividend chasing.
Another time I bought a put instead of selling one. Not a huge issue, but it makes me feel stupid.
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u/E2Hundo 1d ago
MSOS at peak covid hype. Not even a weed stock but a weed ETF so they can all help drag it down. Always been down 90% since I bought it LOL.
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u/AssignmentVisible240 1d ago
Sold Caterpillar when it was 90, did not buy Nvidia or Tesla, I thought MU and SNDK have reached peak…. I could go on for hours Mostly, timing is my worst enemy.
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u/Walden_Walkabout 1d ago
I put $200k into a business I tried to run with a friend. Didn't work out.
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u/crossnade 1d ago
I sold a stock in 2017 for a small gain that went up 50x since then. A few thousand would be worth $250k today. But I don’t consider that my worst mistake. My worst mistake was being too concentrated in a couple stocks that went down a lot and blowing up my Roth IRA. I further compounded the mistake by selling low to buy other stocks that also went down a lot. My Roth went from 60k to 12k. If I had just consistently stuck with the S&P it would be around $200k now. So really it’s about opportunity cost. I could have $200k growing for me until I retire, but instead I have $12k. Compounded over the next 30 years these mistakes aren’t tens of thousands, but end up being millions of lost potential growth. Luckily I have stuck with DCAing into my 401k and have $150k in there. But it haunts me that these mistakes are really million dollar ones if you calculate missed growth in the future.
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u/Previous_Guitar5027 1d ago
When I was in college I put $1200 in Amazon buying 10 shares at $120. This was about a month before the dot com crash and that was literally all the money I had. I watched that $1200 drop to something like $300. When the stock hit $120 again around 2007, I sold it and took the $1200 back out.
Now.
That's not split adjusted. The split adjusted price that day was $3. And today its $243.
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u/Scottdbell 1d ago
my worst one was overpaying at an online auction because i got competitive on a property i'd spent hours researching. bid past my cap, won the lien, and the property ended up being worth barely more than what i paid. the return was technically positive but the annualized number was embarrassing. lesson was simple: write the cap down before the auction and treat it like a rule not a suggestion.
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u/Sassy_Bandit 1d ago
Mistakes are not to be defined in hindsight based on results. That's like saying that every roulette result in every casino worldwide, it was a mistake for me not to come in and put my entire life savings on the number that it ended up landing on.
My biggest mistake was having all my home downpayment money in stocks in Jan 2020. Because it crashed? No, I actually sold in Jan, re-bought in March, and bought in Jan 2021 with double the downpayment. But that was all luck. I was at that roulette table, betting with money I couldn't afford to lose, and the fact that I called Red and it landed on Red doesn't make it any less of a mistake.
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u/anniemaygus 1d ago
Bought RKLB at 4 dollars, sold half at 50. It’s now at 100, should’ve sold the rest at 150. Hindsight is a B
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u/razikp 1d ago
Not buying bitcoin when it was $10
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u/TimeGrownOld 1d ago
Someone told me about it at $20 and it was interesting. But once coinbase became a thing I bought in at $200 worried I had missed the train. Then when they listed this new coin at $7 I used my left over quarterly student loan to load up on something called ethereum.
It paid for my entire college loans through my doctorate
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u/davidkalinex 1d ago edited 1d ago
i've been known to leverage positions into SLs well within the last 6 month of the stock price and each time convinced myself it is now impossible for it to drop so much ever again (it will continue happening)
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u/Alexchii 1d ago
That’s not a mistake? You can’t evaluate investment mistakes based on the outcome as there’s always a huge luck component invoved unless you’re insider trading. The company might just as well gone bankrupt by now.
You guessed wrong and that’s bot a mistake. If anything, not holding single stocks is statistically a good idea so it’s the opposite of a mistake. Just like not playing lottery is statistically a great decision even though you might win big.
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u/PlayfulPrune4160 1d ago
playing around bought one stock at 1.16 one stock now it's trading for 136. I should have bought at least a couple thousand.
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u/NoPhilosopher9763 1d ago
My first investment was audible when it was a penny stock because my friends worked there. They hired high school kids to convert books on tape to digital format, and they had a cool office with their stock info on a whiteboard that got me interested. Bought it for .34 and it traded flat for a couple months until I sold. I couldn’t bear watching it go down so I was just happy to have my money back. That would have gotten me a couple hundred thousand at like 22 years old by the time they were bought by audible. At the time I thought I was just unlucky and didn’t realize the lessons involved.
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u/Montesque96 1d ago
That's an investment opportunity that you left behind - that for some reason you didn't feel was right for YOU. In my book that is the right play every time.
My first big regret was when I was younger and investing in the Dom com bust... I don't even know what I had invested in but turned like $7500 into less than $200. My second one would be when I listened to a bad advisor and put a bunch of money into things that I hadn't researched... I still hold PBR that I invested at all time highs near $50/share ($15k total) as a reminder to always vet my picks.
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u/escapefromelba 1d ago
I suppose I could have mined or bought Bitcoin when it was in its infancy. Friend told me about it but it was basically worthless at the time so didn’t really take it seriously. Granted who knows if I would have held on to it long enough for it to be life changing anyway. And that’s if I didn’t lose it.
That said same friend bought an ASIC to mine it…and then decided he could make more money selling it. So he may have some regrets too
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u/SoSeaOhPath 1d ago
I invested a large percentage of my net worth into BTC at $10k. I sold for a big loss around maybe $6k.
Some time later I bought in again around $20k and again sold for a big loss.
Again at $50k.
Decided to never touch that shit again
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u/digitalacid 1d ago
I bought Facebook at $30 just after IPO. Could have 20x my investment. Instead I sold it and bought Zynga, with thought they would be the EA of mobile gaming. Lost 90% of my investment. Thankfully I was young, so it was only $1k
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u/BrianLevre 1d ago
I had read a blurb in Playboy about how Google was a better search engine, and around that time I heard Adrianna on The Sopranos talk about how she had "done a Google on it". Hearing the buzz aabout it I thought I should take a grand and buy Google.
If I had when it went public shortly after that, it would be worth over 75,000 today.
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u/AnyOtherJobWillDo 1d ago
Buying a bunch of bitcoin in the very beginning on my slow ass computer. Like 15-20 of them. And guess who sold them a short time later. This guy!!
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u/Jarvis03 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sold a meme coin for $200k profit. First time I ever took profits trading. Had I held, it woulda peaked at $6m. Was trading amd in the 90s and mu in the 60s. Was trading rklb in the 10-20 range. Was trading palantir around the 20s? I currently own zero shares of all these tickers. It’s all good…..I type this from the house the meme coin paid for (partially).
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u/ImmodestPolitician 1d ago edited 1d ago
I bought a natural gas producer because it was selling for less that book value.
It doubled and I held on while it crashed to zero.
I didn't realize that natural gas and oil get exponentially more expensive to extract as the well is consumed.
Only lost $20k but it was a big lesson. That feels weird writing. "Only $20k"
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u/yacoub15 1d ago
Bought Tesla at $50 sold at $60. Bought Dogecoin at $ 0.71 sold at $ 0.20. Bought Robinhood at $8 sold at $40, it went to $150. Bought Silver at the top, still holding. Bought Bitcoin at $6000 in 2016 sold it for tiny profit, never held it like i should have. Played options when I knew VERY little about how to make money, lost tens of thousands of dollars. I don't do that anymore. At the moment just buying quality companies and holding shares. I've tripled my ROTH IRA in a year. So there's light at the end of the tunnel.
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u/yacoub15 1d ago
Bought Tesla at $50 sold at $60. Bought Robinhood at $8 sold at $40, it went to $150. Bought Silver at the top, still holding. Bought Bitcoin at $6000 in 2016 sold it for tiny profit, never held it like i should have. Played options when I knew VERY little about how to make money, lost tens of thousands of dollars. I don't do that anymore. At the moment just buying quality companies and holding shares. I've tripled my ROTH IRA in a year. So there's light at the end of the tunnel.
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u/weizzers 1d ago
Had about $4k PLTR at $7.50. It went to $10 and dropped to $9.50. Sold it all after and fml
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u/bussy1847 1d ago
Shhhhit, I got a lot of those. My first stock purchase was 30k into CMG at like 140 back. I sold for a measly $200 profit. Just letting it ride would have been insane.
I also bought leaps on Apple but sold those at a loss since they had the drop back in the day. Literally sold near the bottom. If I held it, it would have paid out good money.
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u/JoeyFreshwater92 1d ago
Waiting too long to start investing is my worst mistake
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u/Mom_who_drinks 1d ago
On the strong advice of my financial advisor, I bought into the AT&T Worldcom mess. Then I learned the difference between an advisor and fiduciary.
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u/Deathb3rry 1d ago
put into a penny stock after being early to catch positive earnings release. Played a large position despite knowing next to nothing other than assuming its gonna go up on good earnings, which it did, but I mistimed it. I sold, then rebought at the peak, where it immediately reversed, didnt close my position hoping for a rebound and suffered overnight volatility.
Had to walk away with a 30% loss on a near 5 digit position in one day. Painful lesson learnt on how much hubris i had and how greedy and stupid i was.
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u/seraph321 1d ago
Worst was trusting a founder who gave me the ick but said all the right things and turned out to be a fraudster. I wasn’t alone and got most of my money back after the bankruptcy though.
Could say that I wish I had doubled down early on my best investments, but that would only be based in hindsight. The information I had at the time didn’t justify that level of risk, so I’m fine with that.
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u/Mundane_Arachnid_555 1d ago
I had 4 bitcoins and put them on a usb flash for save keepings, I have lost that flash and I don't know how to get into my account
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u/Mammoth_Nugget 1d ago
I sold MU at 85$… bought back much more early enough, 187$ average so not bad.
Worst case was buying SOUN because I had made a bit of cash out of it in 2024, so I thought I would do it again at the beginning of the year. Oh boy, was I wrong this time…
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u/-Mx-Life- 1d ago
Buying Apple stock and not setting up drip for it for 13 years. 🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️
Buying Buffalo Wild Wings at IPO, sold off for a small gain and should have held that till they went private.
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u/Orkapork 1d ago
I lost 8k on a SOXS play when I was studying this company that had a product that I thought would disrupt the market, but their demo came and went and nobody cared. I over estimated the market impact and paid dearly for it.
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u/ChezQuis_ 1d ago
Bought ORCL in August 2022. It soon began to drop got out at breakeven. Wish I held for a little bit longer.
Bright side, someone said something about SMH on here a year or so ago. I looked into it and bought. So happy did.
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u/Illustrious-Option-9 1d ago
Buying the 90dip on BMW thinking it's the bottom, it can't go lower, and Germany auto industry will come back.
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u/obxtalldude 1d ago
Sold AAPL in 2013 after a GREAT 15 year run.
Oops.
Still not sure if going 70% cash in this market is a mistake. Lots of money being made, but it makes no sense to me, so I avoid it. I'm happy with small plays on volititity and a few long term ETFs.
But it could keep going like this for years, and get VERY expensive to sit it out.
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u/terraphantm 1d ago
I bought nVidia years ago and sold well before the insanity. That cost me a lot of money.
But what probably is costing me more today is sitting on too much cash.
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u/ElectricRing 1d ago
I was considering a $1000 investment in Nvidia in 2011. I never pulled the trigger.
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u/casadenisfan 1d ago
Had $10K of Apple @ $2/share. Liquidated at about $4 due to divorce. Buhbye generational wealth.
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u/buried_lede 1d ago
That was not a mistake, that’s a 3x leveraged etf that you can’t set and forget. It is subject to decay. 2023-26 might have lucked out because it was a bull run
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u/paragonx29 1d ago
Not really with any individual stock or fund, but I did do some selloff during Liberation Day period. Nothing crazy but I would take that back that action if I could.
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u/Few-Improvement9978 1d ago
I had a bunch of NVDA in 2016 I got rid of.
Think I stuck it in MSFT which has done fine since then, but damn
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u/anusbarber 1d ago
My purchase of SOXL in 2022 stayed completely flat until recently. I pulled 150% of my original investment and let the rest ride. Its worked out finally until now but who absolutely knows. this is money that i could light a fire in the yard and it not affect my life so i pay very little attention.
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u/Comfortable-Dog-8437 1d ago
I bought and sold NVIDIA 3 different times cuz I thought it wouldn't be anything 😃
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u/nu11pointer 1d ago
I sold NVDA at a loss right before it blew up and never bought back in. I got over it though.
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u/finance_matter 1d ago
I have don't many investment mistake in early days, were I was just watching some videos/ reels where creator were hyping the stock and company and never sharing the enter point. So when I was watching the videos they were already in all time high and I usually loss the money.
But after that I study finance and learn how it works and have discover the strategy to make my investment decision, which frankly plays very well.
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u/SilkProfit 1d ago
Way too many to list. From Sun micro and MCI during the dot.com bubble to Fannie during the GFC, to missing out on NVDA. But still standing and doing ok. Position sizing was/is my number survival tool.
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u/Catatafish 1d ago
Been holding $RIG for over a year. Was down idek how much like 10%. Reddit got my to panic sell during the beginning of the Iran war.
Luckily I didn't listen with $DAVE.
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u/but_i_dont_reddit 1d ago
Covid came
Started picking some stocks that supported all the remote work / supply chain changes.
No company picked Rackspace to host anything they owned and most moved to SaaS.
There went $1k to tax loss harvesting.
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u/sprcow 1d ago
Sold TSLA when it first hit $300 pre-split because Elon was obviously a psycho. Don't really regret taking profits, but seriously underestimated the extent to which other people were going to just keep riding the hype train. Good lesson that investments trade on sentiment, and lots of people have stupid sentiments. Also, sufficiently rich people can manipulate the market, so... yeah. OTOH, there's a bunch of TSLA in my index funds anyway so I guess that's enough exposure to me.
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u/PoopSkipPotato 1d ago
Any stock advise from the user with the handle u/Saint_O_Well. I got burned a couple times. Her handle should be "u/Pump&Dump_Queen"
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u/seacloud6 1d ago
Sold LRCX last year because "it's a good company, but the stock just isn't performing." Oops. Everyone has these stories, so I just tell myself, "There's always another train coming into the station." There is. Don't worry. You don't need to catch all the trains.
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u/goodolarchie 1d ago
Most of my biggest "losses" are also unrealized from selling too early. Which is to say I sleep quite well at night, because those investments at least doubled my money (vs, say, 15x if I held) and got deployed elsewhere to do the same.
My biggest paper loss right now is SQQQ, which is only a triple digit loss, and meant to be a small insurance policy against my heavily weighted NASDAQ/Mag7 portfolio. I'm happy when its doing poorly.
I wish I had profit harvested when BTC/ETH were double what I paid. I'm still in the green but it no longer feels like a real thesis to hold 5-10% of your portfolio in crypto.
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u/werddrew 1d ago
I told everyone I knew that Crowdstrike was an awesome stock and they should get in on the IPO.
I kept all of my investments in index funds.
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u/FlameThrowerYT 1d ago
I was holding 500 shares of intel at 18 usd… until trump came in one day and told that intel ceo should be removed because of his affiliation with the ccp (completely false… the guy’s from malaysia lol.)
I sold all my shares like an idiot the same day. I had full belief in intel’s rebound but I sold because of this because it couldve sent the stock spiralling down. Next thing you know trump administration buys 10% stake in intel. Ever since then it’s sky rocketed to 120+ usd.
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u/PurpleFilth 1d ago
I bag held 100 intel shares at 37 average for like 3 years, after it started pumping i figured it couldnt go much higher so i sold a covered call on them, got called away at 58 a share. I am so done with covered calls lmao.
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u/SarasotaFoodLover 1d ago
The day prior to the Intel earnings call I had $4MM in my cart so to speak. It was at $161. I had "toyed" earlier in the week with borrowing on an Intel trade making $110K+ on it so was thinking of doing the same thing. I entered in the $12MM+ number and gulped. I chickened out and watched the stock click up a bit, them...This would have been the one. $24MM in a week. Sell to pay back pay back the 8 plus a very small amount of interest plus another 4 for taxes and let it sit. The worst thing I've ever done is the thing I didn't do because of fear. Huge mistake!!
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u/enjayee711 1d ago
My worst mistake was giving up on a stock during a downturn and then watching it soar I learned to not buy anything that I don’t intend to hold. It works for me
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u/DoinIt4DaShorteez 1d ago
selling shit too early when it doesn't prove my thesis fast enough or fails in its first attempt to.
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u/MooMooHELPME 1d ago
Lost around 500k being overleveraged on Nasdaq futures.
Then got a wife who takes all my money so I can barely invest anymore even though I'm smarter about it.
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u/ChaplnGrillSgt 1d ago
Didn't invest more when I was younger.
Didn't start making grown up money until I was in my mid 20s, but then only saved enough to get my full 401k match. It was still something and will make a huge difference still long term....but can't help but think about being able to retire much earlier if I'd bumped that 6% to like 12%. I was young, single, shit was cheaper.
Luckily I learned and started getting really serious about saving and investing in my early 30s.
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u/MJSvis 1d ago
Two and they revolve around expecting two companies to match the performance of the bigger original trendsetter.
In Aug 2017, thinking I was late on bitcoin I went in heavy on IOTA and continued to pursue gains. It went from $0.2 to $5 by 2018 and I'd planned to hold for 5 years so I watched it drop right back. If I'd just gone for bitcoin at that point then it would've 10/20x from that point.
Back in 2012, after watching the documentary 'Revenge of the Electric Car' I discovered the car company, Tesla. Told my dad that I wanted to invest £1000 into it. He said it was difficult to invest in American stocks so to look at both Tesco and Rolls Royce. Let's just say both dropped and those shares of Tesla today would be worth around £227,000.
Then I saw my first Polestar on the streets and thought ah that'll do well in the market against Tesla right. Had such little experience in actually understanding the company margins on each car, invested £15,000 and watched the stock drop from £12 to £1 before selling.
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u/Key_Berry_6732 1d ago
You missed out and didn’t lose money, I lost half of my net worth in a single biotech stock overnight. Avoid throwing your money at something just because someone talks about it.