Most of my regrets as an investor are related to all the crappy stocks I've bought over the years. I've been lucky with most of them, selling them before losing too much money. But, there were some exceptions where I lost A LOT of money. Like enough money to buy an expensive car or to put braces in the mouth of my two kids.
Among the few regrets related to stocks I've sold too early, there's a few names. First, there's Boyd Group which I bought when the stock was around 10$ and I sold when the stock got to 11 or 12$. Yes, I did that.
The stock is now at 215$ and I came back when it was around 100$.
Then, there's XPEL. I bought 3000 shares in april 2014 at 1,75$ and sold them about one month later for 1,55$ each.
The stock is now at 42US$. I realize that if I had kept these shares that cost me only 5900 CAN$ 6 years and a half ago, the total worth of that investment would now be about 170 000 CAN$. Isn't it funny?
Of course, it's very easy to say that with hindsight. At the time, XPEL was on the edge of being a penny stock and I owned many other penny stocks (I invested in many cheap stocks and I think that I sold XPEL as a statement against all those crappy penny stocks that are almost always a loss of time and money). In fact, when I look at all the other penny stocks I owned (or stocks just slightly over 1$), I'm happy to have sold them all.
But, once in a while, you get the penny stock that has a future and XPEL was one of them.
I'm currently thinking about being back in the stock. Just like Boyd Group, I've lost the chances of getting a spectacular twenty-bagger but, I still could double, triple or quadruple my money. That stock has everything I'm looking for, plus it's not a penny stock anymore.
You may have fucked, but you may always get back on track.
Bought my first shares of Shopify in May 2015 at $33.85. At that time, I also owned Biosyent, Concordia, Actavis, Cipher and Valeant. I sold everything over time except for Shopify (now it's a 26% portfolio holding after selling shares twice when it hit 30%). If I held everything I would have MONSTER gains being right on only 1/6 of these stocks. I've learned to hold stocks longer and look at the big picture, the macro trends and ignore short term movements. My portfolio is up 123% since January 1st, holding Shopify, TTD, PYPL, TEAM, CSU, KXS, CRWD, ETSY, VEEV, AVALARA, DXCM, NOVT, TDOC, NOW, PINS, ZILLOW GROUP, SYPS, ENGH, LSPD, CDAY and Unity Software.
RépondreSupprimerI've certainly had my fair share of disasters...I rode both Callidus and Concordia down to zero...losing $7,300 in the process.
RépondreSupprimerI've also sold great growth stocks like Toromont (probably my biggest mistake ever) and more recently Descartes (sold when it was trading at $51.00) in order to buy Whitecap.
I think every investor will go through experiences like this as he develops his basic approach to investing.
To me investing is more of an artform than a science. You are never going to make all the right moves. I currently prefer to minimize the number of decisions I have to make in the market...That means buying opportunistically and holding on for a very long period of time while ignoring what the overall market is doing.