Margin Calls Destroyed My Early Success
I had set aside some money to invest into stocks. So opened an account with Internaxx bank and took out a cheap subscription under a special offer with the Porter Stansberry tipping sheet.
It was around 2010 and I did remarkably well, quickly building up a nice little portfolio and collecting dividends and watching as the values increased. What could go wrong? I had a phone call from some broker in the UK who specialised in pre IPO stocks and floatations so listened and the guy explained how using CFD’s you could leverage up your position and take control of a much bigger slice of the action and make a huge amount of money…….. I think some rich guy like Warren Buffet once said if you do not fully understand what you are investing in just give it a miss. So a new account was opened and I started off making my fortune.
Well no, I ended up with a black hole which had these things called margin calls which gobbled up cash like there was no tomorrow. I quickly realised that this was not working and bailed out pretty quickly but then got into leveraged trading on gold……… It was an interesting 6 months and taught me that I was not really understanding what was going on and I would never cut it as a trader so there was something positive at least.
Related Horror Stories
"Safe investments"
Just filed my taxes and I’m looking more closely at my finances. I’m pretty good with the basics but feel completely out of my depth with investments.
In 2021 I started a Morgan Stanley investment account with the financial advisor who has been managing my parents’ money for many years.
I invested $67,000 in 2021 and let the advisor choose the stocks/bonds/funds/etc, telling them that I’m extremely risk adverse and I needed safe investments. On Jan 1, 2022, the value was $71,950. On Dec 31, 2022, the value was $58,587. In 2022, I paid $1,025 in trade commissions and $984 in service/advising fees. So basically I paid my advisor $2,000 for her to lose me $13,363 over the course of 2022.
Is this normal? Every time I ask my parents or advisor they tell me “the market is down for everyone.” But my parent love their advisor and thinks the sun shines out her butt and my advisor has a financial incentive to keep me.
Losing $22K in 90 Days Thanks to a Football Star Turned Investor
I was 29 and rolled my 401k from Virginia Tech to an “investment guy” at my bank. He was the star football player in high school and had no actual qualifications for investments. I rolled my $40,000 into the bank investment account. In less than 90 days it was down to $18,000 in value.
I had them sell everything and rolled it back out to another firm. When I complained the investment guy said “you are only 29 and you will make it back.” Yeah, but it took me 5 years to build up that $40,000 and he destroyed more than half that in 3 months.
The Financial Planner Who Missed the Tax Benefits of Donating Appreciated Stock
A financial services guy told a lunch group that it made no difference whether people donated appreciated stock directly to a charity or sold it and donated the proceeds to charity. He claimed that, either way, “you still got the charitable deduction. ”While this is true, he completely ignored the capital gains tax that would be triggered when the person (rather than the charity) sold the appreciated stock. He could not comprehend that a direct donation of the appreciated stock to charity could save the donor from having to pay tax on that capital gain.
He was totally obsessed with the relatively minor charitable deduction on their tax return. I thought this was horrible advice and a disservice to anyone who followed his financial advice.
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