Author Topic: How to get over lost opportunity?  (Read 2695 times)

hope2retire

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How to get over lost opportunity?
« on: May 19, 2020, 04:24:00 PM »
Apologies if this sounds like a rant...
Have been saving for a while and jumped the gun in buying vtsax before this massive drop in March. Started to auto invest plan weekly from Jan and by the time complete dip happened avg price I picked was $76/share.. still underwater on this year's purchase.. but cannot seem to get over losing a gain of 600 shares in this ordeal...

Another incident is I played with sp500 stocks for 4k in 2016,  GE, HOG still underwater after many yrs, chose to stay with sp500  instead of Bitcoin when it was 400, 10 coins at that time, now worth 90k, but GE HOG value at 1.2k.

I know I have to grow up.. but last couple of days in keep thinking how    right time would have shaved yrs of work for me...

Even writing this gets some of that burn off ...
Stilll.... Damn it...

End of Rant...

waltworks

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2020, 05:37:27 PM »
What will your 30 years in the future self think of your choices today? I bet they're slapping you a huge high-five. Just like you'd be slapping your 30 years ago self (if you're that old) a huge high five if they'd been plowing their allowance into VTSAX, right?

-W

hope2retire

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2020, 06:30:17 PM »
Thanks Waltworks for making me view it differently...feels better .


Mrs Brightside

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2020, 08:21:07 PM »
No advice here, just have to say I feel the same. Somehow I managed to put all my 2020 IRA funds in right before the crash. D'oh!!

Fru-Gal

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2020, 08:30:21 PM »
Just read an old book about stock trading and a great point made about mutual funds/index funds was to buy them with the understanding that you *will* hold them through several boom/bust cycles. As many around here have said you don't time this kind of investment. Get in, be emotionally strong and hold on for the ride, and for the love of god don't sell low.

One way to look at that is you got the bust right up front. Compound interest is gonna be your friend. Set it and forget it. The drops of today will be but blips in the future.

For my part, I had a concentrated position that I didn't like and sold it at a small loss a month or so ago because I felt cash-poor and was worried about an economic crisis. But one way or another I was planning to sell that anyway... now it's up slightly but who could have foretold that?

dresden

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2020, 09:58:22 PM »
I am right there with you rooting for GE - I have a pension from GE with 17 years of service and I am not sure what will happen if they default and PGBC takes over.  There is a table showing the maximum they will pay but of course that is a maximum so not guaranteed.  I am currently above the maximum by a few hundred dollars so I would definitely lose some pension - just not sure the exact amount.

No advice here, but if you keep buying a little every paycheck you will be getting some of what you buy at a discount compared to the high.  That will help your overall return.

AccidentialMustache

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2020, 10:12:26 PM »
I have a recruiting shirt from Paypal, back when their logo was the Sistine Chapel ceiling with Adam and God sending money with palm pilots. I also have recruiting shirts from a number of long-since-dead "pets.com" dot-com busts.

With hindsight and only the Paypal shirt, you might say I did it wrong. With hindsight and only a failed shirt you'd say I did it right. With all of them and instead having had a nice steady, paying real dollars job, you'd say I did it the mustache way. Slow and steady, investing over time, improving my skills, boosting my pay, keeping my expenses low.

vand

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #7 on: May 20, 2020, 02:39:15 AM »
A truism of investing is that old opportunities pass us by and new ones come up every day. If you regret on missing out on something, find something else. Easy.

mrmoonymartian

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #8 on: May 20, 2020, 04:05:40 AM »
.. still underwater on this year's purchase..
You're strapped to a roller coaster, not a moon rocket. The odd decade under water is perfectly normal. If you're not prepared for that, you should maybe reconsider maxing out all of your credit cards to buy as many futures contracts as you can. You could keep one in reserve, just to be safe.

KBecks

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #9 on: May 20, 2020, 05:10:21 AM »
A year is a very short time as an investor, and we are only in May.

Be a -- what's that Lord of the Rings character?  Treebeard?  An Ent?

Be a timelord?

Think long term.

UnleashHell

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #10 on: May 20, 2020, 05:49:41 AM »
you are still investing now right? so that your average goes down as the stocks are on sale?

frugalnacho

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #11 on: May 20, 2020, 09:57:50 AM »
You didn't do anything wrong.  You did the right thing with the information you had at the time.  Also your story starts in January, and it's only May. That's way too short of a time frame, you need to adjust your perspective to think long term...like 50 years kind of long.  Your investing story isn't over yet, it's barely begun;  You are still in the early pages of chapter 1.  This is only a small fraction of your total FIRE amount, and only a few months... I hate to break it to you, but you are likely to experience several more "hiccups" on your path to FIRE.  Just keep plugging away and ride that roller coaster through the ups and downs, and don't obsess over things that are outside of your control like market fluctuations. 

ChpBstrd

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #12 on: May 20, 2020, 01:58:25 PM »
You may be dealing with a case of hindsight bias.

Were GE, HOG, and the total market between January and May 2020 the only investment decisions you’ve ever made? How many other investment decisions turned out fine? And how closely did you really look at bitcoin before backing away? Did you have an account for crypto trading and never clicked the buy button, or did you read a few articles like the rest of us? Are you fairly calculating the success rate of your decision process, or latching onto the most notable misses?

There’s a danger in playing with hindsight. Counting all the ways you could have made a fortune but didn’t reinforces a mindset that investing success is based on luck, when in fact it is based on perseverance (like so many other ways of succeeding). Also, it causes us to think in terms of big all-or-nothing bets, the opposite of diversification and risk control. When we say “I should have bought Netflix in 2010” or “I’d be worth $20M today if I had put it all in VIX long calls back in January” we imply to ourselves that putting a very large allocation of our portfolios into speculations with highly tilted payoffs was a rational way to invest back then, and therefore is a rational way to invest now.

Truth is, the only way to win the lottery is to make a bad financial decision.

MilesTeg

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #13 on: May 20, 2020, 03:26:15 PM »
Apologies if this sounds like a rant...
Have been saving for a while and jumped the gun in buying vtsax before this massive drop in March. Started to auto invest plan weekly from Jan and by the time complete dip happened avg price I picked was $76/share.. still underwater on this year's purchase.. but cannot seem to get over losing a gain of 600 shares in this ordeal...

Another incident is I played with sp500 stocks for 4k in 2016,  GE, HOG still underwater after many yrs, chose to stay with sp500  instead of Bitcoin when it was 400, 10 coins at that time, now worth 90k, but GE HOG value at 1.2k.

I know I have to grow up.. but last couple of days in keep thinking how    right time would have shaved yrs of work for me...

Even writing this gets some of that burn off ...
Stilll.... Damn it...

End of Rant...

Missed opportunities that are worth agonizing over:

* Not taking a chance to ask that really smart, funny, sexy girl out and finding out years later she was into you at the time.
* Missing the opportunity to witness the birth of your child.
* Missing a chance to see your dying father one last time before he dies.
* others...

Missed opportunities that are not worth agonizing over:

* stock purchases
* lots of other things...

hope2retire

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #14 on: May 24, 2020, 07:38:01 PM »
Thanks All for the Mrs Brightside, Fru-Gal, dresden, AccidentalMustacian, Vand, mrmoonymartian, KBecks, UnleashHell, Frugalnacho, ChpBstrd, MilesTeg for all the replies, thought, views and advice.

@Fru-Gal -- Yeah this is my first biggest blip on the ride. when i started in 2016, i was worried of 50 points down as blip... if i look at it i  LOL at that..

@Mrs Brightside -- Funny, I saw an old guy at work who did the same and said he learnt from the SARS time before.. :)

@dresden -- i can't imagine what goes through your mind after all the yrs of service at GE and the accumulation/holding to drop. I wanted to buy more of GE and did when i got it at $25 and when it dropped, got the avg to $20, but do not have the cajones to do it again. As it is been under $20 for over 3 yrs now. May be that is a strategy i have to try as it is very low now.

@AccidentialMustache -- I convince myself with the same as slow and steady wins the race (Some of the opportunities are just , no cajones to jump. Evne TSLA at 400 and now.. jeez..:)


@thanks Vand, yeah that is what i am looking now, trying to learn.


@mrmoonymartian , @KBecks  -- i agree, its too short of a time for long time investors.

@UnleashHell -- yeah i have automated very amts deducted every week. but it does not move the needle as much as this drop. or even the volatility.

@frugalnacho -- Thanks. Yes my first roller coaster down, but no one in my row to give company to hold onto  just in case :), everyone behind me and in front of me, just shouting woo-hooo... :). Again Thanks for the kind words.

@ChpBstrd -- Yeah, it was bought in 2016 and have not come out of all 3 of the stocks. All SP500 [ GE, HOG, PDCO ] stocks at that time.  I really liked the way you had put it.

@MilesTeg -- The first one on your list, it really brought a smile (reminds me, dang it did exist :)). Thanks for Showing the bigger picture that are really and eventually important over all of this...Thanks for sharing your thought...

H2R








hope2retire

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #15 on: May 24, 2020, 07:41:01 PM »
Sorry for the late replies, completely forgot about the post for the past couple of days.....

hodedofome

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #16 on: May 24, 2020, 09:10:00 PM »
Yeah GE and HOG - I’m thinking bad long term prospects for those companies. I’d rather put my money in stocks that are growing not dying.

hope2retire

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #17 on: May 25, 2020, 11:46:52 AM »
I did the math and this is what it looks like.

Not sure how to format this properly it looks good when i typed (spaced it properly), but shows horrible in the post. I have a screen shot attached as well.

                                                    AvgPricewith NewInvestment               
   AvPricePurchased   $1,000    $2,000    $3,000    $4,000    $5,000    CurrentPrice
GE             20.72            11.79      9.72      8.80      8.28      7.95       6.41
HOG             49.9            32.74      29.38      27.95      27.15      26.65       24.38
PDCO     38.87            24.09      21.36      20.21     19.58      19.18       17.4



                                                          Difference            
   CurrentDifference   $1,000    $2,000    $3,000    $4,000    $5,000
GE           14.31              5.38      3.31      2.39      1.87      1.54
HOG           25.52              8.36      5.00      3.57      2.77      2.27
PDCO   21.47              6.69      3.96      2.81      2.18      1.78


I am in a dilemma now. Is it like throwing good money over bad money or is this an opportunity to recoup the losses by putting more money. Want to try it on GE, but not sure.


The way to read the numbers is the current average purchased price is on the left and if I put $1000, $2000, $3000, $4000, $5000 in new money in each of the stock, how much would the new average price would be in the first table.

Second table just shows the difference in the price, which would help to see how close this can go up in price so i can be flat with no profit-loss situation .

For Example of GE, i see a sweet spot of 3k. i.e if i put in additional 3k today to buy at $6.41/share, my new average price at that point would be $8.80 per share of GE of my total GE holdings. Which means if the share prices increases from 6.41 to 8.8, i would break even. This could be more possible in the near term (unless it goes bankrupt) than  it going to $20.72 (almost super hero change in their business etc which iam not confident)..
Same things applies to other two as well at around $3k.

Any thoughts? I know i am going to be face slapped but, better to get others SME thoughts than not asking at all...

H2R
« Last Edit: May 25, 2020, 12:06:31 PM by hope2retire »

mrmoonymartian

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #18 on: May 25, 2020, 03:51:47 PM »
If you keep spinning, you're bound to win eventually. Come on Red 27!

waltworks

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Re: How to get over lost opportunity?
« Reply #19 on: May 25, 2020, 08:48:05 PM »
Just buy the index, bro.

-W