Your biggest HYP mistake?

[OLTB]

Similar to monabri, I am a new HYPer so my mistakes are yet to flourish in all their glories! Despite my lack of time in the HYP world, once again the 'C' word rears it's ugly head so that is probably the biggest mistake as the dividend has been stopped (at least all others are paying dividends of some sort or other).

I am learning that patience and faith are qualities that need to be constantly re-affirmed to myself and in this world of instant gratification (24 hour news, commentaries from 'experts', the next 'big' opportunity) staying on the path, maintaining a balanced sector portfolio, studiously re-investing dividends, ignoring the noise is perhaps where a future mistake could be avoided. A bit like Doris I suppose

Like Ian says, I do really enjoy the conversations here and learn so much.

Cheers, OLTB.

[toofast2live]

Viewing banks as a dependable source of income - in 2006.

Had a change of mind two years later

[AndyPandy]

Biggest loss in terms of % was Independent Insurance. My only 100% loss to date.

Biggest loss in monetary value was probably RBS bailing out at the peak of the crisis. I had far too many as a % of my portfolio. Either that or the 20% hit I took when taking my pension out of Equitable Life - but then it went into a SIPP and I've managed to turn that around over time.

Biggest missed opportunity mistake (with 100% hindsight skills obviously) was selling Lo-Q (Now Accesso) after they doubled from Carmensfella's TMF recommendation at C. 23p. Felt pretty good with myself at the time...

OK, the last was not and probably never will be HYP territory but others on this thread have strayed too

As others have said or implied, no-one's perfect and as long as you have a good average you have to take the rough with the smooth.

[Itsallaguess]

Biggest loss in monetary value was probably RBS bailing out at the peak of the crisis.

Which in and of itself, can't help anyone currently running a HYP learn any lessons from the mistake. Not a criticism at all, but which leads me onto my second point....

I had far too many as a % of my portfolio.

Which can help people learn from your mistake immensely, so thanks for raising that specific issue regarding the RBS problem you've experienced....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[88V8]

Chasing the yield. Luni was right.

So we have Carillion 80% underwater, and even more annoying I got out in 2013, then later back in.
Cobham, Interserve, RBS, GLIF who are 80% down but still paying, and Morrissons who are paying but not much.

I also had Tesco, Aviva the serial cutter, Balfour Beatty although their Prefs continued paying, First Group, Go Ahead Group, Halfords, Antofagasta.

Too many eggs, well luckily our only big basket is GSK, the bottom hasn't fallen out yet and we are reducing steadily.

Chasing the yield, and relying on past glories from Dividend Champions.
http://dividendchampions.uk/

The biggest mistake for a new HYP investor would be imagining that one can buy a portfolio and then just keep it for ever. Nothing is for ever.

V8

[ayshfm1]

Biggest HYP

Bradford & Bingley - complete wipeout.

Biggest non HYP Telewest - loved the tech, didn't consider the debt.

Biggest missed opportunities.

Did a lot of assembler programming on 6502 and later ARM - knew the ARM cores were a joy to use - did not connect that buying the shares when they floated out of Acorn would have been a good idea (and by the time I did always thought they looked expensive, certainly never HYP material)

Got shipped off to a Microsoft presentation in Winnersh circa 1984/5 for Windows and specifically the unified device driver model. Came away thinking it was definately the future and put in train a windows rollout in my then company. Again didn't connect that I ought to buy the shares.

The recent tech stars Google, Facebook etc I reguard as charlartons and have not been tempted to invest.

[Gengulphus]

Biggest missed opportunities.

Did a lot of assembler programming on 6502 and later ARM - knew the ARM cores were a joy to use - did not connect that buying the shares when they floated out of Acorn would have been a good idea (and by the time I did always thought they looked expensive, certainly never HYP material)

Yes - ARM was floated in April 1998 (*) and it wasn't until around six years later that it paid its first dividend as a listed company. There were some brief periods in 2008 when its yield approached 2.5% (dividend 2p, share price about 80p), which with its high dividend growth rate some HYPers might have felt made it attractive on a "yield looks like being high 2-3 years out" basis - especially when combined with other attractive features such as its lack of debt and good diversification with all the 'usual suspects'. If anyone spotted that opportunity and acted on it, they'll have done extremely well - a HYP share becoming a 2-bagger after 8 years is pretty good going, a 20-bagger unheard of! But equally, I don't remember anyone saying anything about such an opportunity at the time - I suspect everybody or almost everybody failed to spot it because of being distracted by what was happening to the banks at the time, and/or by what was happening to the TMF boards at the time (this was about the time of the raging "to HYP or not to HYP?" arguments and the board split), and/or because "yield looks like being high 2-3 years out" shares aren't their cup of HYP tea anyway. And if there were any exceptions to that, they probably wouldn't have dared post about such an unconventional HYP share anyway... (And by the way, I'm not such an exception - I only spotted that ARM had been a very-unconventional-but-not-totally-ridiculous HYP opportunity with hindsight some years later.)

(*) Not "out of Acorn", by the way, at least not in the normal sense of a company floating a subsidiary. ARM was formed in late 1990 as a joint venture between Apple and Acorn, who took a bit under half the shares each, and a chip foundry whose name I forget, which held the balance, and so was an independent company rather than a subsidiary of either Acorn or Apple from the start, albeit one with two dominant shareholders.

Gengulphus

[moorfield]

Some interesting views - thanks all.