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 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 Post‘Try Before You Buy’, If at All Possible
The worst investment I have ever made in Thailand was buying land. I had the idea of building a house for my parents on a block in Cha-am, Phetchaburi province, at the southern end of the Kingdom’s central region. Don’t buy a home unless you really want to live there After I acquired the land, my parents lived in the area for a few months on my suggestion because I thought it would…
Read Full PostHard Lesson About Compounding – Could Have Been Better with Coke
Prelude As an excited 17-year-old who had saved up a little more than US$2,000, I wanted to buy some stock. I held small amounts of two other stocks at the time, so I purchased Coca-Cola shares with the money I had saved. Ignorance is not bliss when missing big future interest I don’t know what I was thinking when I sold the Coke shares around six months later, ignorant…
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