Everyone loves talking about their investment success stories. We all here about how people buying penny stocks at a few cents, for them to boom and make big profits. Or perhaps buying the lows in crypto and making 10X or more. While these stories are great, failures are often much more valuable lessons. I thought it might be interesting to share a few disaster stories, and learn a little from each others investment errors (learning experiences)

_{Image Source: Pixabay}

I'll go first.

My first big investment stuff up:

During the tech stock bubble of 2000-01 (Dot-com bubble, tech wreck, whatever you want to call it) I like many others fancied myself as a know-it-all investor and trader. Really, I didn't have a clue, but I thought I knew it all. I had around $10,000 in the Australian stock market at the time, and quickly moved it into tech stocks chasing the big gains. A few successes and the capital had grown a bit. Then, at the height of the boom, I realised that my brokerage account had delayed settlements. I could buy stocks, hold for an upturn and then sell (for a profit as everything was going up, right) and not actually need to have the money in the account.

SWEET, now I'm a day trader!!

Needless to say, I had a position open when the market crash began, and all of a sudden, I'm in trouble. Start selling my safe stocks to cover losses, and continue trading to chase back those losses. Thinking at the time it was just a correction, not the actual bubble bursting, I continued to chase losses. In hindsight, it was basically a gambling addiction, but rationallised as investment and trading. The crash went full force, companies that had been valued at billions collapsed in a heap, and my $10k of investments vanished in a blur. In the end, I had to take out a $13,000 persoanl loan to square the debt away with my broker.

So, over a few months, I had managed to turn $10,000 of hard earned investments into nothing but a $13,000 debt, through greed, inexperience and bad timing.

_{Image Source: Pixabay}

My second big investment stuff up:

I have written about this one in a post ages ago. Here is a link to the full story.

Long story short, I wanted my own business, borrowed from family to get it, it went bad and I lost everything, including a chunk of my parents retirement savings, and 10 years latter I am still in big debt and living week to week.

If you have the time, do read the original post linked above (Steampeak tells me it's a 9 minute read) and there is also a follow up post that you can find here which summarises what went wrong and what I learnt from the experience. (just don't vote on those posts, they are really old)