DD_545i

Here's another WTF [was I thinking].

About 4 years ago I used to play poker with this guy in New York who had been the chief currency strategist at one of the big-name brokerages, but had retired in his forties. I asked him about dollar vs euro vs GB pound and where he thought was the best place to keep my money in the next few years. He said none of the above, put it all in gold. I looked into it, saw that gold had been up something like 30% year-on-year and figured I was probably too late. This was about 4 years ago. Gold has freaking skyrocketed since then. I could be up god-knows how many percent right now. I haven't followed the charts (to avoid depression) but I'm sure it's more than doubled. I can only get over it by knowing that if I had gone all-in on gold (poker pun there), I might well have got back out after getting 20% or 30% gains. The urge to lock-in the gains would be strong.

Oh and another WTF. I lived in a place called Sandbanks in England back in 1990 and was looking to buy a house for £400,000 (about $600,000) but I ended up not doing it and moved elsewhere. Right now that house is worth about £4,000,000 ($6million). Again, I take solace in the fact that it'd be unlikely I'd have hung onto it for 21 years. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Who expects to get a 10-bagger on a house though, and knows they have to stick with it for 20+ years to see that.

Still though, I'm gonna say WTF anyway.

m630

if that guy followed his own advice on gold, he's really livin large now!

how 'bout this, going back into the early '80s, my father was into British sports cars, we had a '67 austin healy 3000 mk III at the time, my fav car ever due to it, but had sold it off as our growing family had become 5 and my mother didnt think it practical anymore, imagine that,we gave the car away basically, and i certainly cried a river when it left. However, that had brought up another opportunity, finding a circa '60 ferrari california spyder in the Hemmings motor news that was for sale in the midwest for something like $3500 iirc!!! yes, if you know what this car is, its one of if not the most sought after ferrari by many, and the car was in blue, the rarest of all ....well we were very interested by the seller wasnt since we were so far away and the deal never happened...the car in red at auction goes for more than $1,000,000 ,,,talk about lost opportunities, I still curse him for not going out there to get it!

m630

we understand it but dont seem to care much if you follow our political leaders follies...do you have any ideas on what to do about it, perhaps they need a different perspective!

v_therussian

THANK YOU! That's EXACTLY how I feel!

Just because you allow your gov't to screw you harder than we do over here (at least, for the time being), it doesn't mean that I - or you, for that matter - should be ashamed.

Fact is, most of what you pay at the pump is taxes. And seeing how that 14.5 trillion number is about to get kicked up to 16 (and then, no doubt, 20 is coming), the only thing we should be ashamed of is how we continue to sit on our asses and allow this travesty to take place.


There are SO many of these stories... never count what you could have made, man. Just learn from mistakes and go on. I missed a great trade in CHFEUR (long CHF, short EUR) in the end of July because my wife talked me out of it. I would have made enough on that one trade to be able to afford not to sell the E60 and get another car. But so what? I didn't do it, I learn and I move on. I kept the peace in the house by agreeing with her and going "safe". Now I know a little better that occasional risks pay off well. Also, that to take these occasional risks, you need to have a little money that you can afford to just lose completely - because, as you probably know, FX markets are leveraged and a 1 point margin call wipes out half your money. 2pts could be total loss. After the announcement by Swiss Central Bank that they are dropping rates to 0, who knows where I would have been... well, now, looking back at it on the graph, I "know" I would have been in the money still... but in reality, it means nothing, because I did not take that trade. So now, I decided to put a few shekels to the side for this type of trading and if I see another opportunity like this, I'll go in without having to risk anything significant. Lesson learned

DD_545i

I don't get why the world is talking about America's national debt as if they're the worst. They may be in terms of the $$ amount of the debt, that's just because they're the biggest economy, but for debt in terms of % of GDP, they're either 11th or 37th depending on whether you include social security.

Plus, I think it's funny how it's only ever China that's called out when it comes to who owns America's debt. Japan has almost the same amount of it, and UK is not far behind.

I absolutely don't dwell on it. Totally moved on and enjoying the fruits of the good decisions I did make But when a thread comes up where you can get the odd WTF off your chest, well you just have to don't ya

I still tell the story of the day back in 1998 or 1999 when I was enjoying the stock market and trading US stocks at home in the evenings (afternoon US time). I'd made the decision to buy 500 shares of SATH ("shop at home") at $10 each, as we were in the dizzy internet bubble and anything could be traded. I reckoned I'd buy these 500 and keep them a few months as part of a diversified internet stocks portfolio. As I was filling out the online order, some talking head on CNBC came on with his stock tips and he said SATH was a strong buy. That was in the height of "the CNBC effect" where any positive mention by them resulted in a spike in the stock almost immediately. I had the jump on the rest of the viewers though, I already had my order filled out and was about to click BUY. Realizing what a chance I had, I immediately changed the 500 amount to be 10,000 and clicked BUY. The price I got was unaffected by the CNBC mention because I'd got in so quickly. I got them for $10 each. I then watched the CNBC effect in action and after only 60 seconds they were at $11, but then the price started slowing and the volume dropping. So I clicked SELL and managed to offload all 10,000 of them at $11 to some of the slower CNBC effect traders. I made $10,000 in 1 minute. A year or two later I left the stock market completely during the first phase of the market collapse and got out even - no gains or losses at all. I was massively lucky. I think I got out as the NASDAQ had lost about 25% of it's value from 5,xxx down to 4,000. That seemed like a massive crash at the time. Who knew it'd go down below 2,000 and still be around there 11 years later.

v_therussian

CNBC itself is a big WTF these days... well, it's always been, it was just harder to know this before Jim Cramer...