What Was Your Worst Investment Decision?

Before I got on board with broad diversified funds like ETFs, when I used to invest mostly in single stocks, I bought a Brazilian Telecom stock purely to diversify my holdings. I knew nothing about Brazil or its telco market. What followed was a straight line decline as the Brazilian currency just kept sliding down and down and down.
 
Diversifying my original PRSA to 3 funds in (if i recall correctly) US equities, commercial property, and Asian equity around 2005.

It sat there for 15 years doing SFA and 5 years ago when I figured out diversification for the sake of diversification was just dumb i put it all on US equities since which time it doubled.

Also illustrates how totally useless 4 years of studying business is in terms of giving zero relevant knowledge in making long term investment decisions in real life.
 
I guess not holding onto/accumulating shares I had in a large US multinational I used work for. But hey the kids were young then & there was always something to be paid for.
 
Selling my flat in London (bought thatcher era, rented out post crash) and buying a holiday house in France 20 years ago. We’ve had amazing holidays there but while we made a substantial profit on the flat when we sold if we had it now I’d be retired. Meanwhile the house might just about sell for what we paid for it, ignoring the work we put into it.

I googled the price… it has quadrupled in price since I bought..mind you I sold it for double what I’d paid. But if we’d hung on… great rental income and no shortage of professional agencies to manage it for us. We had it as a rental for a long time and zero hassle
 
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Bought an 120 SQ meter three bed apartment in Budapest in 2005 for 120 k ( this was when Irish companies did everything for you, even had an Irish guy over there buying old apartments and arranging refurbishment), spent 50 k doing it up ,sold it for 90k in 2009

Easily the worst

PS, I went over and back twice with a years worth of rent stuffed in my shoes and pockets, Hungarian management companies insisted on cash only,all euro , so that brings the losses down about 15 k
 
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I changed pension providers, converting my fund to cash from Monday and it hasn't arrived in my new account yet. So sold low and will shortly be buying high. Hurray!

The most ironic thing is that I delayed requesting the transfer of funds to minimise my time out of the market and managed to pick the worst few days of 2025 to be out of the market...

I'll be lucky to get away with a 10% loss. To be fair the lower AMC should cancel that out over time, all other things being equal. I'm currently exactly where I want to be in terms of returns to date and I'm hopeful of getting better returns a result of the switch.

Still though.
 
BIG-notorious said:
converting my fund to cash from Monday and it hasn't arrived in my new account yet. So sold low and will shortly be buying high.
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The way things are going you may have sold low but will be buying lower? 125% tariff on China now from the stable genius...
 
ClubMan said:
Yeah, but likely just another severely wounded cat bounce knowing what the idiot in chief is capable of.
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Chance'd be a fine thing.

I'll follow the plan anyway and get back in when the funds hit my new account. But I wonder how many people got burned the same way trying to deliberately time the market
 
Markets bouncing back a lot this eve. Nvidia up nearly 20% today, microsoft up 10%
 
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