Part One: How I made 497000 profit
The other morning I heard the business news announcer telling the world--- Since the beginning of the year anyone in mining shares would have made a killing, Anglo American is up almost four times” What he didn’t say was at the beginning of the year all of the pundits were suggesting that Anglo was on its last legs so the risk of investing at that time was deemed to be enormous. I know because I was holding Anglo and sold at £5.50 I would like to say I doubled my money except I bought it at £13 and that was £22 pound a share less than it had been. What he also didn’t say was that if you had bought Anglo in 2000 you would have paid the same price as it’s currently at. No capital profit in 16 years. Now if you had sold at the top in 2008 you would have made 280% after eight years. So if you had done as the announcer suggested and bought Anglo this January you would have made more money in ten months than you would if you had held it for eight years - or you would have made nothing if you had held it for sixteen years. It’s rubbish, all rubbish because you didn’t do any of those things and if you did buy in January you were very brave and over time likely to wipe out all of your profits and lose your home.
With hindsight buying a share like Anglo when it is 95% down seems sensible but when the time comes for action I can think of many reasons why the average investor is unlikely to act. But I wish I had or hadn’t—hadn’t sold that is, because I would be closer to getting my money back. Note even though someone may have quadrupled their money over the last ten months I am still waiting to get my money back, or would be if I hadn’t sold.
That’s it, the idiocy of investment performance, words that should never be used on this web site ever again by anyone are could would should. Did -is the only word that means anything in the world…
