Too Hot Investment Thread

Thanks a bunch. This is very helpful.

 

For those of you still interested in EV's, Lucid Motors goes public via merger on July 26. Should be big.

 

ETF vs mutual fund: Compare similarities, differences | Vanguard

In a Roth won't make much difference. I wouldn't go out of my way to change one or the other.

 

For all of those intently tracking my "store of value" coinbase crypto account with Bitcoin and Etherium, over the last few months I have been able to maintain a store of $582 of the original $1000 put in.

 

I sold in May for about what I paid in Jan to move to something I believed in more (ABML).

I blew this one. Not sure what I was thinking not selling a SPAC that had more than doubled.

 

Well, when NVDA split it then fell a few points. That’s when I bought and it has roared back ever since.

 

If this happens bitcoin gonna go

 

crypto is just a trading vehicle to squeeze the little guys and help move illicit funds.

short squeeze all based on a rumor that Amazon might start taking bitcoin. More lilely, Amazon is going to try and create its own cryptocurrency

Nearly $900 million in crypto shorts were squeezed in a single day as bitcoin surged into the $40,000 region (msn.com)

$883 million worth of crypto short positions were liquidated in a 24-hour span amid bitcoin's rally towards $40,000.

Data from Bybt.com compiled by The Block notes that short positions on bitcoin accounted for 81% of the squeeze, with $720 million liquidated.

Most of the crypto short liquidations happened late Sunday night as bitcoin's price spiked 10% to break the $39,000 level for the first time in six weeks.

Ryan Todd, research analyst at The Block, told Insider that given bitcoin's historically high price relative to past cycles, this liquidation event posted one of the largest total magnitudes of losses in dollar terms for traders who were positioned short bitcoin with margin and futures products.

Also read a piece by british authorities concerned about how companies headed to bankruptcy could us crypto to hide assets that would otherwise be unwound to pay tax debts and creditors

 

Alright, here's something fun to shake up the investment thread - what were your biggest misses? I don't mean saying "I should have bought bitcoin 10 years ago", I mean a point where you actively considered a particular investment and made what ended up being the wrong decision. I have two right off the top of my head:

In late 2019, I was involved in an online discussion about Zoom. It was around $60 share. As someone who uses video conferencing regularly, I didn't see any reason why people would flock to Zoom over the established players. Boy was I wrong about that one... it shot up well over $500 during covid, peaking at nearly $600/share. Potential 10x gain if you could call the top.

The other one was AMC. My wife and I were AMC A-list members before covid. Monthly membership plan - see up to 3 movies a week. Really enjoyed that when we had it, and thought AMC was doing well with their rational version of the MoviePass model. Last summer, with theaters shut during covid, and the stock price languishing at $2-$3/share, I had a large cash position and was seriously considering putting a significant chunk into AMC. Ultimately, I decided not to pull the trigger. Too much debt on the balance sheet, and there were legitimate questions about whether AMC would survive the covid movie drought. And then r/wsb pounced on AMC after GME, and it went to $20 in Feb, and then $60 in June. I would have dumped it in a heartbeat at $20 and could have made 7-8x over a period of months.

 

For me, its tesla. I still hold it over my wife's head. I really wanted to buy tesla when it first went public. Price was around 17 bucks I believe. I still have the notepad that I was using to track potential stocks with tesla on it. My wife didn't want to risk the money as we were new parents and homeowners. I wanted to buy 1000 shares then. I don't think I could have held out to the peak but damn. Oh well

 

Not near on that level, but I bought some Tesla shares back in early 2014 for app. $150 per share, and then I sold it in mid-2018 for app $310 per share because it hadn't done much lately and Elon was being more Elon than usual...

Made a decent profit on it, but obviously would be about a full year closer to retirement if I'd held onto it until today.

My other big finance blunder was getting talked into $700K of whole life insurance from a NWM salesperson that my wife knew. Took ~4 years to realize our mistake and finally pull the trigger on cancelling those policies.

 

This violates my "no bitcoins" rule, but I somewhat kick myself for not jumping on Amazon earlier. We were early adopters of Amazon Prime (2005/2006?), we have always bought a ton of stuff through Amazon. I should have recognized how transformative it was. But I wasn't an active investor at that stage of my life. Back then it was.... around $35 a share. Today it's about $3600, so more than 100x. I later bought 50 shares at around $1200, and sold those at $2500. Certainly a nice return, but oh what could have been!

 

Mine is also Amazon. Back when they were only selling books and I think music - they had a little bump and I remember waiting for the price to come back down a few points to $30 a share. No need to bother with due recognition - I’ve already got my sign.

 

well had you pulled the trigger on your wife instead, you could have perhaps ended up with the $700k after all

 

I bought 2k of NVDA back in 04 but sold it once it doubled. Buying those shares back at like 50-200x the price stings to say the least!

There’s a reason why they say the best investors are dead investors.

 

It is called greed. I have lost alot of money chasing, it is still going to go up.

 

Bought 2,000 shares of AMD for about $2 per share. Was thinking about buying 10,000 but didn't. Still did alright as I sold them for about $88 per share. Guess I can't really complain...

 

Level 3 Communications.

I bought them at $1 per share. There was some question about their financing, they had some debt coming due, but they also had enough hard assets that the share price should have been about $5. I bought everything I could, then sold it a few months later and doubled my money. A few years later it hit that $5 mark I was expecting. Then it blew past that. About five years later they got bought out by CenturyLink, Level 3 shareholders got something like $25 and 1.5 shares of CenturyLink for each share of Level 3. I just keep reminding myself that I doubled my money and try not to think about what the rest of those gains could have been.