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What's the worst investment you've made?

Discuss Stock buying Shares, tips and ideas for stock market dealing
WickedLester
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What's the worst investment you've made?

#132935

Postby WickedLester » April 17th, 2018, 10:21 pm

This isn't really a share idea, I couldn't find a more appropriate board. If the Mods think it should be moved then fine.

I'd be interested to hear the disasters of others and i'll post what I think is my worst. I don't mean the biggest loss you've ever suffered but the investment where with the benefit of hindsight you can see that your entire rationale for investing was deeply flawed. I'm sure i'm not the only one who's ever made a mug punt and maybe we can learn something from each other.

My worst I think was quite recent and would be buying a few Torotrak at a touch over 1p a share. At the time the company had already warned that their was little interest in their technology and that if they couldn't sell it they would go into liquidation. From memory the market cap at 1p was about £6m. My reasoning was that after spending 10's of millions of pounds over 20 years developing it there was a fair chance of someone being interested but with the benefit of hindsight how much would anyone pay in reality with no customers? It probably would have been good fortune to get back the penny a share I invested. So really I took a punt on a small likelihood of making a small profit at best against the high likelihood of suffering a total loss. I can't for the life of me work out why I did it. The only silver lining is that I had at least the sense to only make a very small investment. I did get out before the end but only with enough money for a night out.

So is anyone else prepared to 'fess up?

YeeWo
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#132955

Postby YeeWo » April 18th, 2018, 4:28 am

Davies & Newman PLC, the parent company of DAN-AIR. I was a teenager and while working in the travel trade got to deal a lot with DAN-AIR. My "investment" was <£1k, the point is I was So Young 25 years of dividends/compounding in a decent company would of multiplied my initial
investment many times over. As it was BA bought DA for £1 and shareholders got nothing........

The experience was useful from a learning point of view, I still keep the paper certificate!

flyer61
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#132970

Postby flyer61 » April 18th, 2018, 8:13 am

Charterhall - small Company late 80's...had a high yield..lost 10K which 30 years ago was a huge amount. Certainly made me realise that when yields get high - watch out!

tjh290633
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#132980

Postby tjh290633 » April 18th, 2018, 9:29 am

Where do I start?

Buying back into Marconi instead of selling out when they peaked was arguably the first.

Getting out of Halifax and switching in to Cattles was another.

Buying Mapeley when they had a good portfolio of bank properties and Government offices, but failing to bail out when Fortress got a majority of the shares.

Trying my hand at AIM shares, with a 90% record of failure.

Carillon of course.

TJH

staffordian
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#132986

Postby staffordian » April 18th, 2018, 9:52 am

Another AIM disaster for me, Earthport (EPO).

Bought around 2001 and sold about four years later for peanuts.

They are still around, somehow, losing money hand over fist, and having had share consolidations and huge amounts of dilution.

At least I was not the only one though, even Paul Scott, Paulypilot from TMF recommended them at one point, long after I'd said goodbye to them.

Fortunately I hadn't bet the farm on them; just a mid three figure punt with only a mid two figure return when I sold, which was painful enough!

OLTB
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#132990

Postby OLTB » April 18th, 2018, 10:06 am

Andalas Energy and Power - it's still in my ISA!

Sitting at a 90% loss and won't cash it in as it's a reminder of why I don't play the AIM market. Mind you, if the company can ever fulfil their promise of 'developing an international energy business focused on developing upstream assets where it can apply innovative solutions to monetise undeveloped upstream assets', I'm in the money!

Cheers, OLTB.

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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133001

Postby Urbandreamer » April 18th, 2018, 10:45 am

Well two stick in my mind.

Early in my investing life I bought a company called Prospect industries, who maintained coal fired power stations. I was convinced that the demand for their services would last a fair time. Maybe so but the company folded within a couple of years.

The other was contributing to the RBS rights issue.

Of course I have made other mistakes and lost money on other investments, but those are the ones that I regard as clangers.

JamesMuenchen
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133006

Postby JamesMuenchen » April 18th, 2018, 11:13 am

Doubling-up, then tripling-up, on RBS for my HYP (which also held LLOY).

OZYU
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133017

Postby OZYU » April 18th, 2018, 12:19 pm

Too many to list them all over all that time, but Hanson Warrants and Japanese Warrants spring to mind as total losses. Learnt a bit.

Ozyu

tjh290633
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133042

Postby tjh290633 » April 18th, 2018, 2:18 pm

FredBloggs wrote:Possibly not getting out of Halifax would have been an even worse outcome though?

Yes. The bad decision was switching into Cattles, when I rejected Provident Finance because of its impending demerger.

TJH

Stanley117
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133060

Postby Stanley117 » April 18th, 2018, 2:57 pm

This investment trust was sold to me by an IFA about 20 odd years ago when I trusted this IFA with my investments . - Legg Mason Investors International Utilities Trust plc (formally Johnson Fry International Utilities Trust plc) - - It is still being wound up by the liquidators. I assume it is too late to get any compensation now ?

tjh290633
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133067

Postby tjh290633 » April 18th, 2018, 3:26 pm

I forgot the Johnson Fry Worst performing fund, which lived up to its name.

TJH

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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133081

Postby PeterGray » April 18th, 2018, 5:03 pm

I managed to lose over 90% of an investment well into 6 figures in Niko Resources, by investing at exactly the wrong time, and not selling quickly enough. Not my finest hour (or 4 years) in the markets!

Peter

Stanley117
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133082

Postby Stanley117 » April 18th, 2018, 5:05 pm

tjh290633 wrote:I forgot the Johnson Fry Worst performing fund, which lived up to its name.

TJH


Unfortunately I can't find the letter from the IFA (about 20 years ago) when he recommended to me I should invest in - Legg Mason Investors International Utilities Trust plc (formally Johnson Fry International Utilities Trust plc). I assume it is much too late now to go after him now.

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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133100

Postby Sobraon » April 18th, 2018, 7:02 pm

Ooh cathartic…

More than 30 years ago my dear sister worked in financial services and passed me a scrappy handwritten note from one of her firm’s analysts about a listed overseas mining company I *think* called something like Greenwell resources.

Subsequently I bought shares, the company tanked and then went into liquidation (there have probably been re-incarnations under similar names and I know there are existing companies called Greenwell and I am not sure of the exact name). Not a huge loss but enough to sting.

This was one of the most useful life lessons I have ever had – and on occasions I am reminded of this event by Mrs S in memento homo… fashion should I become too cocky about investment. It also meant that I have never recommended any investments to my family (have not and never will talk about this with my sister who didn’t act upon the original note).

WickedLester
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133151

Postby WickedLester » April 18th, 2018, 10:53 pm

I guess we shouldn't all feel too sorry for ourselves, sometimes institutions make investments which to my eye are utterly irrational too. I've been kind of following Hornby and I simply can't understand why institutions are prepared to constantly throw good money after bad. They've raised about £35m through placings in the last few years yet the company is still losing money and sales are lower than they were five years ago. As far as I can see if it recovers it's probably worth around its market cap now and if it doesn't it goes bust. I just can't see any upside.

The only conclusion I can draw is that it's men of a certain age getting nostalgic about the happy days of their youth. Certainly I loved making airfix models, playing Scalectrix and playing with cars (although I preferred Matchbox to Corgi).

I'd be sorry to see them go under but I wouldn't be prepared to give them cash to prevent it.

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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133177

Postby Mike88 » April 19th, 2018, 7:59 am

e-capital during the .com era. Went up massively immediately after purchase but took my eye off the ball and eventually sold my modest £2k investment for £24.

WickedLester
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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133346

Postby WickedLester » April 19th, 2018, 8:20 pm

Lastminute.com for sure. Think I got back less than half of my IPO investment: They seemed so fresh faced and plausible in the late 1990s.... A textbook example of how not to deliver shareholder value.


I guess you can at least take some comfort in the fact that the website is still in business so you didn't actually pick the worst investment possible during this time.

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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133507

Postby bluedonkey » April 20th, 2018, 1:27 pm

My worst investment decision isn't a share. In the early 1990s I decided not to get into BTL. I lived in London and had the cash for a decent deposit. Massive opportunity cost.

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Re: What's the worst investment you've made?

#133719

Postby AndyPandy » April 21st, 2018, 11:15 am

Went to sell some Centrica (CNA) a couple of months back. Fat fingers meant I sold CLLN instead. Kicking myself, I bought back the CLLN and then some to average down.

My only saving grace was that I did eventually sell out CLLN after the first plunge and before the final curtain call.

I've had bigger losses and one total loss (Independent Insurance) but that's the one I kick myself for the most as there were enough alarm bells ringing by then.


Others have pointed out missed opportunities. Mine was Lo-Q (now Accesso) that I bought after Carmensfella suggested it on TMF and sold after it doubled to about 50p.........


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