Overreliance on or Ignoring the Experts Can Both Do Damage
My worst investment, in terms of stupidity, but not the biggest loss, was when I started acting on information I heard on a radio program about investing in stocks. Past performance is no guarantee of future success I had listened to this show and had been very lucky with my first investment; a…
Read Full PostOne of Thousands Who Followed the Herd to Big Losses in the Dot Com Era
The worst investment experience in my life was during the Dot Com period of the late 1990s, when almost everyone was a fanatic about the “Internet magic”. I was no exception. Many friends around me were talking about the idea of start-ups and later selling the “company” to some big guys on The Street, such as Yahoo or whoever, and making billions from this…
Read Full PostClassic Case of Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer Beware)
My biggest mistake was the purchase of a presale condominium unit in the Philippines as an investment without doing sufficient due diligence on the developer and the process itself. Investor puts singular belief in property salesperson I just believed what the real estate broker told me and now I’m at risk of defaulting and losing all the down payments that I have made over the course of more than two…
Read Full PostSilent Restaurant Partner Finds His Voice Too Late After Too Much Golf
A few years back, a Japanese colleague of mine, Kobayashi Takeru (not his real name), decided to invest in opening a ramen restaurant in Bangkok. Japanese restaurants had yet to reach the popularity in the Bangkok dining market that they have achieved today and so there appeared to be a lot of space for further…
Read Full PostAlways View Yesterday’s Successes Through Today’s Glasses
When I was younger and not so financially “sophisticated”, I used to work for one of the largest international general contractors in the world. In theory, it should have been a good idea to invest in the company I worked for As part of my 401(k) plan, I was given the choice of different…
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