What are some of your investment stories?

[Clarkfan2]

What are some of your investment stories? The Motley fool has investing stories in the Sunday addition of our newspaper. I thought it might be a good idea to start a similar thread.

 

I was so stupid and green during the tech bubble that I went out and bought Qualcom stock on an account funded by a balance transfer check. I cashed the check and put it into my checking account and proceeded to open a brokerage account. Meanwhile I surfed that rate to a lower card.

 

My thought was that there was no way to lose on Qualcom stock. I lost nearly 70% of my 2k investment in 2 months. (Not counting transfer fees and interest to the credit card companies.)

 

The good news is that last spring I bought some XOM @ 37 which I still hold and I got out of SIRI this year with a 70% gain before it went sour.

 

Clark

[dieselgirl]

I got out of SIRI this year with a 70% gain before  it went sour.

 

Clark

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Poor SO had a hunch about Sirius when it was pennies. Didn't act on it. He kicks himself every day now.

[radi8]

Xm and Sirius are building a house of cards- watch them carefully.

 

The huge expenditure for rights to major league baseball and Stern requires them to do one of several things if they are to ever show a profit:

1) Get their subscription numbers up. So far, the churn rate has been rather high.

2) Raise the monthly fee- which will increase the churn rate.

3) carry advertising, the lack of which is one of their selling points.

 

People compare XM and Sirius to the explosion that Cable TV saw in it's early days- which is a flawed comparison.

Cable TV offered a multitude of channels that weren't available over the air- XM and Sirius offer programming that is and has been available elsewhere- even on CD's you burn yourself or via MP3 players.

In larger cities, there's already 100 channels of radio available over the air- for free. Satt radio's selling point has been no commercials- something that may change real soon if they are to keep from going under completely.

 

Their numbers were initially kept up there as many new cars came with sat receivers built in- and included 1-year subscriptions.

With new car sales down and people not renewing that contract...subscriptions have levelled off.

 

Another problem with XM , which they are NOT making available to the general public- is the satellites themselves.

XM's satellites, "rock" and "roll" were expected to last 17 years. Problems with the solar panels among other things have caused Boeing to shorten that life expectancy to 7 years-- another huge unexpected expense.

 

They may be a good investment now, but watch them very carefully.

[Clarkfan2]

No problem with SIRIs....I'm out of it! (Sold @70% gain) I'm still in (XOM) which is Exxon Mobil Corp with a recent quote of 63.26 (My purchase price was 37.00) Not to be confused with XMSR or XM Satellite Radio which trades at Fridays close of 28.73.

[Dwayne]

The day I bought my first stock with my Datek account.

 

At 1pm I bought stock in NVidia while I was at work. It was $16.40. I was away doing some work, when I came back at 4pm, the stock was at $12 and change, and had been frozen temporarily. Apparently there had been an earnings report released that afternoon, and the stock dropped. In the next few weeks it dropped to $7 (in retrospect I should have sold at $12 and bought at $7, oh well). I held onto it. This was over two years ago, the stock is back up to $28 now and was recently upgraded by analysts, so I'll probably sell it at some point to lock in gains.