The Sexy Art Of Losing Money

When was the last time when you lost money while investing?

Photo by anahitox at Flickr

My first time was when I was sixteen. I invested in a “business” of selling post cards to tourist in a Summer resort. My investment wasn’t big as I had only to buy 10 pieces of each card, so it made something like 500 post cards. The business didn’t work out however so I had to close the “shop” (a table on the street) and go back home. I had about 200 cards left and I had the choice to either keep staying there day after day trying to sell them, or sell them discounted to my competition on the next street. I’ve chosen the latter. I lost money and learned that sometimes it’s better to sell out my positions at loss rather than to keep them and hope for the best. I had better things to do.

Just recently I lost a nice amount of money again due to my habit to keep cash online. No, I wasn’t robbed or hacked fortunately. But the few thousands dollars I was keeping online for years just because I did not need them have lost more than 30% of their value due to the dollar crash. Add another 30% inflation for that time in my country and you’ll see me losing more than half of actual value. I lost money and learned that money not invested is money lost.

Sometimes we have to lose money in order to gain good lessons. Make losing sexy and use the lessons learned to improve your investment strategy. Losing is not scary. Not taking actions is.

When was the last time when you lost money while investing?