stock market coulda/shoulda/woulda

[Ralphy]

Back in my undergrad days, maybe 10 years ago, I started a subscription to a relatively new company called Netflix. I was pretty impressed with the service and the company, so I invested in about $1000 worth of their stock. Sometime within a year of that, my shares had gone up something like 50-100%, so I gave myself a pat on the back, sold my shares and bought my first car.
Fast forward to today - that initial investment would be worth approx $45,000! Argh. Hindsight is 20/20.
Similar stories?

[jacob]

I can't brag/cry about missed 45-baggers, but I got a lot of four-baggers with thoughts "If only I had put ALL my money into that".

[Maus]

I am certain that every veteran investor has one of these stories. Mine was WSCI, a small specialty metal fab company. Bought at $3 because they had solid balance sheet and a 5%+ dividend. Explosive growth and two years later the stock is above $17 with rumors that Buffet is looking to acquire. They build a new plant. The new debt isn't too onerous, but the 2008 tsunami hits. They cut the dividend to zero to conserve cash and the stock heads to $1.50 a share. I see now that it is back to trading in the high threes, but the dividend has not been restored. My own personal lesson in the truth that you cannot time the markets.

[George the original one]

Mine was "Wizards of the Coast" when it was going through the "Garfield Games" transition. A year later the stock had increased 7-fold and I shifted the $700 to my fund for a house down payment... by the time they were bought out, that initial $100 purchase was worth close to $80k.
Usually the fate of companies that I like a lot is that they end up being bought out (sigh), but "Wizards of the Coast" was my shouldn't-have-sold-it stock.

[Chris]

I consider making money a success (-:
For instance, I bought AAPL at $30, sold at $40. The conditions of my hypothesis were met, and I cashed out. My position would have been worth far more today, but I don't consider selling a misstep. I think it's more important to Stick With The Plan. With a "let it ride" mentality, you're asking to get burned.

[OurLifeInc.]

Mine was La-Z-Boy. I had $450 left in my IRA and happened to run across this stock at $1. The way I figured was it had cash worth nearly half that, plus assets and the brand name had to be over $1. Plus, from what I read and investigated, it was the best of a poor industry. Fast forward about 12 to 15 months and the stock was at $15.
A couple shouldas....first, I should have sold at $15. At $15 the market was assuming well over 10% growth per year. Historically, this would have been a lot, especially considering the current housing conditions. But I held. It dropped back down to $5 (where I would have bought again) and it is now around $8.
The other shoulda is......I SHOULDA BOUGHT MORE!

[RobBennett]

I researched Apple back when it was selling at under $20. This was before the ITunes thing and people were saying they were going out of business.
I made a "Buy" decision, but first had to get some money transferred to my checking account to do the transaction. By the time the money had moved, my attention had turned to other things and I never pulled the trigger.
My bad!
Rob

[George the original one]

@OurLifeInc - your case is a perfect example of why one should use trailing stop losses that you're ratcheting up when you have a rocketship stock. Nothing says you have to sell all of the holding, either. As Chris said, making money is a success

[OurLifeInc.]

@George But I love my stocks!
Haha, in all seriousness, I agree with you. My real mistake came in not pegging a value that I thought was fair. In looking at the numbers, I think that it is an $8 to $12 stock with some good things going on. So once I had a value in mind, I could have sold part of my position once it hit my fair price.
The other reason I kept it then and continue to keep it now is that I think it will be reinstituting it's dividend. Being relatively young (27) and holding this in a long term account (Roth IRA) I think that I will be able to cash in on some dividends and dividend growth where my yield on cost is ridiculously high (SHOULDA bought more, right?!). As of now, LZB has been accumulating cash and paying down debt. I expect them to begin returning some cash to shareholders in the next year or two and hopefully they will be better positioned down the road (less debt, leaner operation) to not have to cut the dividend.
Anyways, I agree with you...whether through a trailing stop or just individual selling discipline...one should always have an idea of what they'd be willing to sell at (or what fair value is).

[Mo]

I too have a should/coulda on AAPL. Though, I wouldn't have made more than 4X my investment.
My biggest miss wasn't stock market. The opportunity came just after I graduated college. A friend asked me to invest in his new business. He wasn't that good of a friend, and he didn't appear to have any really special skills or abilities. I also didn't have $10k. I had $5k, but very likely could have borrowed the rest. He thought that he would need a second wave of investment if things went well, and that I could get in on that. He understood that I had just graduated, and didn't really have the money.
Over the next four years I watched his business succeed beyond everyone's wildest expectations. He certainly didn't need my $10k later on. At one point, he brought home about $300k per month. After about 4 years, he sold the company. Each of the $10k investors got around $1million. Sheesh!
I told this story to a guy once who told me that he was asked to invest $15k in a new restaurant. He had the money, no problem. He didn't do it. Every time he sees a Hooters he's reminded about what could have been.
Such is life!

[Benjamin]

I bet aapl is the most common shoulda stock on here. I also first thought of aapl in the early naughts...what a missed 36.7 bagger!!

[JohnnyH]

Really wished I would have committed to the permanent portfolio earlier.

[Lemur]

Which is funny in hindsight looking at Benjamin's post because it wasn't too late to grab a ~15x bagger.

If you'd invested 1,000 in Apple Inc (AAPL) on February 17, 2011 (Benjamin's post in the ERE forum), today the investment would be worth: $15,886.95

Annual rate of return: 25.28%
Total increase: 1,488.70%
Total profit: 14,886.95

Source: https://finmasters.com/stock-calculator ... 217&a=1000

How many big name companies do we see today that we might think that we already missed the boat on? MSFT? AMD? Google? Etc...
Hard to imagine MSFT going 10x in the next decade though lmao....at that rate their market cap would be worth whole Eastern European Countries...

Even PepsiCo was a 3x bagger in this time frame.

Edit = February 17*, 2011 Not February 11, 2017

[zbigi]

Even PepsiCo was a 3x bagger in this time frame.

SP500 more than tripled since 2011 so if it PepsiCo is only worth 3x then it performed below the market

[I(E)reland]

Might there be any interest in a thread or discussion on potential future multibaggers??

[Bankai]

SpaceX
Moderna

[Henry]

25% of my non-house net worth is tied up in 2 stocks: AAPL/NVDA primarily due to growth.

I would be beyond done if I had limited my investments and therefore would have added more to each over time.

Moral of the story, let your winners run, which I did, but limit the number of runners you have in the race, which I did not. So the latter is where I am focusing.

[Lemur]

@Henry

Took me forever to remember what this is called...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_effect

Reminds me of something Warren Buffett said that would benefit many investors: imagine theoretically that stock prices can only be checked once a year. And on that special day you have to decide to buy/hold/sell. No daily stock watching, no quarterly earnings buy/sell decisions, no dancing in and out depending on what the Fed does with interest rates. I don't think most people invest this way in practice but the lesson is obvious.

[Henry]

My initial purchase of AAPL in 2004 has experienced a 28,000% gain. It should be four times the shares but I can't speak about it. It's really hard not to hate yourself in this life. If I had invested in nothing but AAPL I would......

[unemployable]

My initial purchase of AAPL in 2004 has experienced a 28,000% gain. It should be four times the shares but I can't speak about it.

You think you feel bad? I may have sold you those shares. Had owned it since 1999 and cashed out for like a 20% gain.

I think I have close to 25% of my NW in two stocks as well, but they're oil companies. Oil's about 40% of my NW.