What happens when you put all of your money in a single stock.

We all knew from L1 this was a bad idea… but here are real stories of people who suffered the consequences:

http://forum.thecontrarianinvestor.com/index.php?threads/gt-advanced-technologies-inc-gtat.69/page-505

Don’t know this firm but this is just crazy.

I didn’t even know that some people in real life actually put everything they have in a single stock.

I didn’t realize people actually bought stocks like this. Until one client I knew of bought a small position in Unipixel…wtf?

“I have just lost all of my retirement and all of my son’s savings. My son has special needs and I have failed him in the biggest way, sorry for posting this but I am totally devastated!!”

ahaha I was short that, it was definitely a retard stock. I’m surprised someone was quite that retarded though. UNXL was also a retard stock.

Concentration is thr key to outperformance but obviously it has to be done intelligently and tactically (I.e. Cut your losses short). Nobody became a BSD by owning the SPY.

An old joke, but still a good one.


If you had purchased $1000 worth of Nortel Stock a year ago, it would now be worth $49.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1000.

With Worldcom, you would have had less than $5 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Airlines, you would have $49.

But if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer a year ago, drank all the beer, then turned the cans in for the alumininum recycling refund, you would have had $214.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

It’s called the 401 Keg plan.

^^

No way you can get back 21% of beer purchase cost by recycling.

Still, you get beer though.

You’d be surprised.

You need someone on the other side.

Don’t I know it, the short side of my business is all about targeting retards. I do think it’s unfortunate someone lost their entire life savings if they do really have a special needs child but that was a pretty dumb thing for them to do. The good thing about the market is that no one is required to play, so it removes any ethical concerns about (legally) taking other people’s money. If you can’t afford to lose, don’t play, it’s that simple.

I guess it depends on what kind of beer you’re buying. When I was in college (15 years ago), you could buy a case of Keystone Light tall boys for $16.

So at 24 cans per case, if you buy $1000 worth of beer, that’s 62.5 cases, with 1,500 cans. Assuming you could get a nickel per can, that’s still $75. Still better than Delta, which is your best-performing stock.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

FTFY

It’s sad to read about that family with the special needs child and the other people who lost their retirement account but they were so reckless it’s crazy. There is no difference between what they did and someone who bets away all their income at the track or in Vegas. People get addicted to gambling hoping for that one big win. It’s not rational, but then what addiction is?

Wow, people are still getting burned like this?? I can completely understand some misguided individual only holding AAPL, but this is asking for trouble.

What are saving accounts like in the US, what kind of interest rate would one get if they put greenies $1000 beer money away for a year? It can’t be that bad. Risking your retirement money and special needs kids money to try and make a quick buck is insane.

It’s pretty sad to see their intrigue/optimism at the start of the thread switch to heartbreak in ~7 months.

^ Barely over 1%

It’s kind of like when people save for years and open a restaurant or small business…

My experience with people like this is they like to gamble. Eventually their gambling isn’t isolated to casinos and they go into the market.

As much as these people are idiots, its a bit rich for us CFA Charterholder types to sit around and condemn lay people for their mistakes. How many educated analysts saw the fraud (other than Bro apparently)? And if they did, how many of them stood up and protected the public? People are accountable for their mistakes, including these investors. But the system badly let them down.