by bettybrighteye
I went to financial training seminar while in the military in November 1999 and the lady talked about how stocks like the second coming of christ as the only true path to increase your wealth. I sold all my silver age comics and things and sunk all my savings about 8000 dollars not much into the top growth stocks at the time. Nokia, JDSU, Qualcom (had a 5,000 percent spike that year), and GLW.
Cell phones and fiber optics were where it was at in the late month of December Nokia was a 250 dollar a share darling at the time. Well, one month later my portfolio was worth 1,500 dollars. I had one tech mutual fund i had sunk my whole paycheck of 1,500 dollars that was worth 200 dollars the next month. I held onto it for a while after the crash but by july I put 400 dollars each in XOm and LMT (20 dollars a share) and rest in a Marvel trading around in the low 1 dollar range after the release of the first x-men movie. Now it was all about biotech companies and Yahoo post crash but i went for marvel. The stock was cheaper than the price of a comic book and I thought, I was a genius when I sold marvel for 23 dollars a share a few years later such a bad decision. I used the money for my master’s degree and housing.
I invested a little in the 2000’s, After 9/11 amazon was in the 25 dollar range and I picked up a few hundred dollars worth of it and google when it ipo’d at a 100 dollars a share. Google at the time was saying they were over priced at a hundred dollars a share. The hot stock at the time was Taser now AXXN. So, i’ve had a few years of success and decided sell my stocks to buy a car and put money toward my condo. I took all my saving and went all in october 2007. My dad convinced me to invest in Fannie Mae she looked so safe and respectable. I bought it at 61 dollars a share and it just started to decline right away but i held only to have my diamond hands cut off a few months later when the stock markets crashed in 2008 and I sold it at 60 cents a share. I was utterly destroyed and swore off stocks and cashed out till the recent market crash in march. The only thing i had left were the stock certificates from Xom and LMT.
I had developed what this one nurse i work with calls “I want to see my money in front of me.” I’ve had my money just sitting doing nothing in a money market for a decade. i was just afraid to invest and i’d see facebook Ipo, apple’s smartphone or the rise of netflix and think they’d be really good investments but was mortally afraid of repeating what happened twice before. But after the March crash I decided to jump back in and i’ve done really well these past few months with my early investments in NVDA, Adobe, apple, msft, apple and amazon. i’ve grown my portfolio from 5,000 dollars to 56k even after apple took a huge dive the past few days. Looking at the valuations of some of these stocks i did get the pangs of fear i felt in 99 and ended up selling nvda, adobe, amazon, msft and put it all on apple with 17k on the side for the future snowflake and air b&b ipo. I did pick up more apple in the morning when it hit 113. I feel staying the course even after a huge loss is the best long term strategy and avoid fannie mae she’s a dirty dirty girl. imgur.com/a/cIfzN78
Disclaimer: This information is only for educational purposes. Do not make any investment decisions based on the information in this article. Do you own due diligence or consult your financial professional before making any investment decision.