What is your best/worst stock investment?

Worst: Massey Ferguson. When I was 16 (iirc) I was given about $1000. My father took me down to the firm he used for his investments - where I did the 'adult' thing and invested for my future instead of buying a bike or something else childish.

Who was Massey Ferguson? Yeah, well - that's the problem....

I also invested in Nortel - when it was about a $1.00. How much worse could they do? The experts say to buy on bad news... sigh....

So I've concluded I have no luck picking stocks... the more I pay attention to them, the worse they do. I have one investment firm manage my 'serious' stocks without interference from me. It's not really that much, but it's solid and growing slowly. And I have some 'fun' stocks on the Vancouver exchange for riskier stuff... one of which has gone up 5x or 7x times in the past couple of years. I refuse to even try to remember its name.... 'cause the more I pay attention to a stock, the worse they do. I just wait for the broker to call and tell me to OK what he's already decided to do. Works for me, and makes his job easier.

Anyone here want to pay me to not buy Apple stocks?

Best - was Sprint bought 5,000 of it when it was $1.80 sold it at 11 bucks which helped me pay for grad school, car and all my undergrad loans. Apple was good too I bought it at 76 bucks and sold for 710 but I had no where near the amount I had of Sprint but I think the stock split at some point when I had it. I bought Apple again when it went to mid $300s. I am excited for the stock split.

Worst - Bank Of America. I graduated college in 2008 when the Market Crashed. Everything was super cheap and tho I still made a ton of money off Bank of America it just hasn't really moved much. It has been a $8-15 stock for over 5 years. Everything else has gone up 5-10x what I paid for it. I would put Banco Santander in the same boat but they give me 20-30 new shares every 4 months. The stock isn't really moving too much or as much as BOA but the dividend is very nice.

My dad started buying me stocks in 1997/8. I asked him to buy me some Apple stock, and he said it was too expensive. So I ended up with some Microsoft, Scholastic, and AOL Time Warner.

Now he regrets not buying me the Apple stock back then.

Recently I invested into Motorola, which then broke into two divisions before Google bought them out. My dad thought I was crazy for doing that too, but now the remainder is worth just as much as the two combined.

Scholastic ended up splitting too, but I haven't touched my joint account in a long time now, nor do I know what happened to my AOL stock.

Can easily say that my Motorola investment was pretty good, and probably the AOL one the worst.

10k shares of Apple back in 98(?) when it was around $7 a share.

My current best investment return will probably come off of my house which we've renovated and will sell soon.

My worst investment is usually anytime I try to day trade!

aaronvan said:

My worst: MolyCorp (MCP). A few years ago, the tech press was filled with dire warnings because China was the sole provider of the world's rare earth minerals and was using them for political leverage. When MolyCorp re-opened their Mountain Pass mine in California, I figured a domestic source of rare earths was a cinch. How could this not be a great investment? I bought a chunk at $11/share; this morning, it reached $2.82/share.

Click to expand...

By probably more luck than anything, I bought MCP late 2010 at $31, and sold it on avg. for $65 in April 2011, pretty much close to the peak.

I liquidated all my RRE and Uranium stocks in April 2011. Lucky move.

-t