Learning from mistakes

[DOGS THAT BARK]

Thought it might save someone in future if we listed some mistakes we've made that could easily have been averted.

Here is one of my no brainer --bone headed mistakes.

Selling a stock rather than putting simple stop loss on it--cuts the down side but lets profits run--pretty simple but quilty as hell of not doing obvious

Sold BRISTOL MYERS SQIBB--on changing of guard in Senate thinking they would not be pharmacutical friendly--has risen $4 since

and last but by no means least have had American Express for couple of decades and accumulated quite a few shares via splits--had brain fart a couple months back and sold because of low dividend (how stupid).

Had I just put $1 less than what I sold each at-stop loss--they would have never sold--and too embarrassed to put up monetary gain I lost out on.

Hopefully I have learned my lesson--and might help someone else.

 

[surge]

Been there before. Nothing you can do but learn and go on. I had a horror story with XMSR a while back, missed out on huge profit. No one gets them all right. It's hard to take away something positive, lesson learned is all. Time to get ready for the next opportunity!

 

[selkirk]

here are some of the mistakes I made:

1. bought Rio Amarillo Resources. bought this in the late 90s 96/97. Bre-x and Diamond fields along with a few others caused a large amount of wealth created in the cdn. markets.

made money off of Diamond fields and to a smaller extent bre-x which turned out to be a fraud.
anyways during the market hype invested in this company. Rio was a jr. with several projects in south america. many problems however the biggest one was the burn rate. over 500,000 a month. the stock bought 1.75 sold at 1.25

2. Agate bay similar time bought Rio. remember talking to a broker/friend and we both agreed diamond fields would go up 25-40% in six months. more.

this was fine but little boring, greed was large factor. I mean 25-40% in six months was boring...lol.

wanted 400-1000%
so bought Agate bay. sometimes a large company will spin off a smaller project, mine (old) to a small company. it just would not be worth if for the large cap company. however can make a small company.

some recent examples FNX, and HBM (year end predictions/HBM)

Agate was the oposite. a large company decided to pass on this large but uneconomic project. So Agate picked it up and that was the play.

I even did 28 pages of hand written calculations based on the project and believed it would work.
well they never found more copper and were always short of cash and copper went from 1.40 to .80. and no one needed a copper mine.

remember running across a website from an old miner who shorted penny minning stocks. he averaged 85% for three years. Bre-X blowing up helped his results as the sector went in the toilet.

anyways one of the 20 stocks on his list was Agate. I asked why he shorted the stock, thought it was good value.

he responded " big project that a large company passed on because they did not think it would work. small company has no hope."

so when a large company wants to spinoff a small asset ie. hbm, fnx. that is worth looking at. however large project being spun off to a small comapny is ussually a disaster.

bought at .75 sold at .25
was thinking of buying more of this worthless stock, however never add to a losing position, that is a great rule.

also was just going to keep it, after all not much left at .25 a share. that was a great trade as it went to .01. remember telling the broker sell it no matter the price......

3. Coffee futures.

told this story before bought made great money for a few months shorting coffee. anways lost all the profits and 5000+US.

when you are not sure who the idiot is in a market.....look around, you will figure it out.

2 mistakes in the trade: 1. did not do enough research, only 4 months.

I know stock options, from mostly trial and error, and error. however coffee futures was about the most volatile market could have entered.

also the broker did not set a stop loss 25% like I thought we agreed on....should have done more research on him.

also took money out of a investment that made me 80% in 24 months.....stupid.

by the way the closed out the positon, and one week market went down further. however if I held on would have made back the money plus made a profit on the trade.

still made the correct choice not going to put everything on the line in three weeks, of coffee trading.


thanks
selkirk