(02-15-2020, 03:11 PM)NilesMike Wrote: 2 doozies for me, both MCD. 1st selling it in the 30s in the late 90s, because it just wasn't moving!
2nd, being too stupid to rebuy it at 13/14 in 2003.
That would have been the trade of a lifetime but alas, it's my miss of a lifetime
That isn't exactly the last year or so, but you're doing well if that's your last big mistake Mike.
As I often mention here, my early days of actual analysis were in an investment club in the 90s. Our buy criteria would make Buffet proud, and as exciting as watching paint dry. Half those stocks are now Aristocrats and at least 5 baggers, another 25% of them might as well have went BK. Even after two major market crashes the average annual return has to be well north of 10%, and yield on cost would be crazy high. That's good enough to get wealthy over time. Hindsight is 20/20, and you won't hear me say never ever sell an obvious dog, but if I had it to do over again I'd do what we still suggest, buy some quality, diversify, and wait for your chance to buy some more shares on the cheap. That would serve you well stand alone. That's always worked. While I am crying in my investment beer, the 90's were a special time and I regret that I had no idea what I was doing then. The tech revolution brought some obvious winners, even if some of them faded. AOL, AMZN, Ebay,CSCO,MSFT, most of the PC manufacturers. You just had to control your greed, and have the good sense to start taking some off the table when you got a double in six months. The problem is the mature investors I studied then had this "deer in the headlights" reaction to new tech high PEs. They didn't understand tech, and why their dividend stocks were severely lagging. They predicted the pending bubble pop of course, but they missed the ride. I remember a first year AMZN earnings call. Jeff Bezos shows up wearing boots and spurs. Yeah that really happened. I'm thinking "who is this arrogant clown?" Yeah, the online book seller and future richest man in America. The times were stupid for sure, but you could have bought a lot of these stocks five years after the meltdown. It was fairly obvious who was here to stay. I'll play the next crash the same way I played 2007-09. Mistakes are OK as long as you learn. That's really the whole point of this thread. If you can't think of a big mistake your lesson is probably coming some year soon.