Money Talks

Money Talks

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My stock market mistakes
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My stock market mistakes

10 decisions that cost me $6,000.

Darnell Mayberry's avatar
Darnell Mayberry
May 02, 2024
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My stock market mistakes
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Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash

The idea of this column is to illustrate the importance of buying and holding.

To do so, I’m showing you my screw-ups.

I made many mistakes as a newbie stock market investor. I couldn’t help but to quickly learn the perils of selling a stock prematurely.

Anytime I need a reminder, I can just thumb through my brokerage account’s transaction history or search for a company’s name in my inbox. I still have virtually every confirmation email. They help me track my entries and exits and compare them to where a stock’s price is at present.

The only thing I can’t stand more than selling for a loss is looking back and seeing a stock price has soared after I sold.

Sadly, I have more than a dozen such examples. If I listed them all, this column would stretch into next week.

But my ample blunders from when I didn’t know any better helped to build my buy-and-hold tolerance. Now, it’s not hard at all for me to have a long-term investment horizon. Not even forever feels very long.

Consolidation is my only saving grace for several of my early exits.

I folded much of the money from multiple positions into my chosen total stock market index fund. That helped me to salvage the majority of the appreciation I would have lost from selling individual stocks.

It eased the pain of parting with a skyrocketing stock.

But I still wonder what if?

Here are my 10 biggest regrets.

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