It is pretty straightforward to reach a six-figure profit in consulting over a couple of years, and I'd be glad if I could just "repeat" this performance with a larger amount of money.
An experienced VC once answered my question about why he is flying first class and visiting us lame fucks in a third-tier town in Europe for two days and how he could justify spending so much money on us. He said it doesn't matter if he flies first class or not because if their investments don't work out they run out of money anyways, and if they do work out they make so much money that everything else becomes irrelevant. This put some things in the startup world for me in perspective, and I am trying to be not too harsh and frugal with myself since then.
I have not been able to buy another income property since then as I had to buy a home for myself in the intervening time.
The biggest takeaway from the experience for me is that you should not buy a home for yourself, then rebuild savings for several years and subsequently buy an income property. Buy the income property first, and then let the tenants carry the mortgage. I doubt I would have bought another property if I had bought my home first.
I was very unsure when I first made it. He is 1 1/2 years clean and doing extremely well. I don't think he would be with us today otherwise so I consider it an investment well made.
And just to answer the question, I am not a fan of investments, after three failures during the past years where I lost more than 50% of my money after making the bad decision to buy stock from three banks around seven years ago, then with all my patience I waited and waited to realize that the stock was going down by the hour, after five years I decided that I didn't want to lose more money and sold, and lost exactly 54% of my initial investment.
Way to start my adulthood eh? :D
Lesson learned. It was a costly lesson but definitely not something I could easily forget.
Since then I've mostly been putting my money in cheap S&P 500 index funds and the only active trading I do is backed by cold-hard statistics through thoroughly backtested algorithms on Quantopian rather than my own ill-informed gut feelings.
And with this more disciplined approach, I have long since made back those initial losses. So I guess in the end everything worked itself out.
Made like 50k.
The real reason our model really liked Philly because they were one of the top teams in eFG% on defense, defReb% and off TOV%. Basically, they were dominant in several of the 4 factors that aren't obvious to most casual observers.
So the short answer to your question is, dumb luck and sheer stupidity.
Though, in the long run, losing $250 while getting your feet wet in investing isn't that bad.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-seaman/bitcoin-and-ether...
Worst investment: Still am farming after the commodities bust. Luckily I enjoy it.
Having people to give advice has been huge. If I were to do it again, I would want ensure I have that in place beforehand, be it family members or otherwise. The developer part of me is so used to being able to find all the answers online, but a lot of the farming knowledge is simply passed through the generations.
The problem with stock is that it's very hard to beat the market, unless you work full time at researching what you invest in.
Be careful with real estate. What goes up will go down. Don't assume that "real estate always goes up" when no one can afford to buy a normal home with a normal salary.
I do have one tried and true piece of advice: invest in index mutual funds over managed ones. Their "average" return routinely outperforms most actively managed mutual funds. Worst case, you haven't paid a lot of management fees to the person who has lost money for you. (This is less true than in the past because traders now arbitrage against index funds. Nimble traders exploit the fact that index funds are mandated to buy certain positions.)
Don't use stockbrokers. If they really knew what they claim to know then they'd be fabulously wealthy without your help.
Burton Malkiel's Random Walk Down Wall Street is a good read.
This was followed shortly by my worst investment, keeping my bitcoin on mt gox.
Anyone involved in the law suit? Any estimates as to how much we can expect?
Your next best bet would be Jesse Powell of Kraken, I believe he's the one in charge of the bankruptcy.
Sorry for your losses.
I turned $415k into $530k in 2 years from real estate from an insane booming market. Combine that with Brexit dropping interest rates to make for a rock-bottom refinance, and the mortgage is paid off via rent, so it's a passive income stream that has only expanded on it's profit margin since the refi.
I've also had a x10 startup exit but at small money ($3k -> $30k) but I'd consider that a net loss given how much time/reduced salary I put into it.
I think the key learning is diversification has won out - for every loss I've ever had, it was hedged against the multiple income/investment vehicles which have put me in the green over the last 7-8 years.
The best investment that I actually converted to cash was AAPL that I bought in 2009, and sold in 2015.
The other one is somewhat tongue in cheek, but the ultimate ROI was essentially infinity. In 4th grade, I bought a pack of Pokemon cards. I got a Blastoise. I sold it to a classmate for $32. I then bought another pack. It contained a Blastoise.
EDIT: To clarify, I purchased that $200 in FB very early in my career, when it was a very major purchase. I own more than the original purchase now, as I bought more later, but I'm speaking solely about the original investment.
Bought stocks in late 2009/early 2010 when everyone said the world was melting down. I think I got into SPY around ~115, and it's almost doubled since. I just wish I had more money at the time; my return isn't so sexy in absolute terms.
Also the worst investment yet.