Your best/worst stock investment
 

First, yes, I know that there are other boards out there that are dedicated to stock picks and investment strategies. I just thought it would be interesting/instructive to hear from some of our fellow TFPers about what they are holding now, how it has done for them, etc.

For mine: The best recent investment was a surprise. I bought some shares in an international shipping concern, Frontline, Ltd. (FRO) with the interest primarily in their dividend (16% at the time). I only bought into the stock ~ 6 months ago and it is up 76% as of today, plus it has paid its dividend twice, plus a special distribution dividend, plus spun off its finance portion into a new company which I now have shares in that are also up. My only regret is that when I first bought in, it wasn't for more money. If I were to sell out today, which I am not planning on, I would be up well over 100%.

The worst investment story for me was probably my investment in Qualcomm (QCOM). I don't know if anyone else remembers this stock story, but I was in fairly early and at one point was up over 600%. I did sell some of my shares near the high, so I don't feel all bad, but I should have sold them all. I just didn't want to liquidate a big winner completely out of my portfolio. Now the shares are down 54% for me. I am still holding them as I still believe in the company, but it may take a couple of years for me to reach break even.

Now you...

Hmm... Well, I have made a couple of doosies...

I purchased ImClone just about a week before they tanked. I also purchased a decent amount of Worldcom before they tanked as well.

Some of my recent better investments have included Impac Mortgage Holdings (IMH) and American Airlines (AMR).

I bought AMR back in Aprilish of '03, at around $2.00 a share. Now, it's over $9.00 per share, and I bought quite a bit of it :thumbsup:

It more than made up for my losses with ImClone and Worlcom.

I am fairly new to the stock thing. Worked all summer made some money and didn't like the idea of it sitting in the bank for me to spend and it wouldn't do anything. I took half my money and put in the great company, Merck. I guess it was a bad idea.

Right now it's a bad idea to sell your Merck shares. It's great time to buy, but the stock won't recover until this Vioxx stuff concludes.

Google up "Dollar Cost Averaging". It will help you in the long term by preventing the sort of punishment you just took on MRK - MRK's Chart On the plus side the dividend yield at it's current price is a strong 5.75% but with the trouble emerging in the Cox-II enzyme inhibitor class of drugs that all behave pretty much the same way I'd be caution about taking on another company in this class until the dust settles. I'm sure John Edwards is salovating over the blood in the water on this one but perhaps that's a story for a different thread. MRK will recover...hang on and if you can you might want to consider modestly increasing your holding but do it over time to gain the benefit of dollar cost averaging.

Cheerios,
-Kjroh

My best stock purchase was JOBS, basically a monster.com in china. The IPO came out just a few months ago. Basically, I made tons. The stock trading price went from 18 to 36.

I am yet to have a bad trade. But My putnam mutual funds are not doing to well as of late.

Thanks for the advice. I will hold on.

Best buy was Cisco at $10. Worst was Cisco at $75.

Bought some Jarvis at 40p a couple of weeks ago, quick punt, went up to 48p then bombed to 10p. Bugger. Still holding it.

I don't know if I agree that buying or staying with Merck is a good idea. I owned some, but sold on the bad news (not immediately). I'm basically a buy and hold guy, so it takes something for me to sell. But my gut tells me that it will be years before Merck knows what Vioxx is going to cost them, meanwhile that money can be put to better use in more productive stocks. You can't know everything, but you do know that Merch has no idea of what the cost of this will be in lawsuits, lost productive time, attorney fees, etc. Best of luck.

I used to work for Best Buy, and as an employee, I was able to buy stock for a cheaper amount than street value. Basically what they did was, take a 6-month spread, and the cheapest value over that 6 month period was, that's what I got it for on my next purchase. Well, while working for BBY, the stock split twice. I bought the first time for maybe $18 a share, it ended at a high a lot more than that, but I got the 2 for 1 split and then later a 3 for 2 split. I can say I did quite well off of this.

Another thing, when I was in college, my parent's paid for school; all of it. So, I took out a loan from the school for what my entire tuition would roughly turn out to be over 4 years. The loan interest rate was 1%, which it usually is with gov't school loans. I took all of the money, invested most of it for four years, and let some go into stocks. The day after I graduated, I walked into the student loan office (business office) and repaid every bit in cash, including the 1% I owed. I made over $17,000 in those four years. Gotta love school loans. I plan on going back for my masters and doing something similar, though hopefully, it won't take me four years to get it.

I worked for Bax Global for years and bough stock, they had 3 stocks in which you could purchase. They all tanked, and I had a shitload of stock. Then they put all 3 into one common stock, still in the tank. I sold what I could, took the loss on my taxes. That really hurt.