What the worst-performing investment you've made?

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Invested a relatively large portion of my portfolio in Sears (SHLD) last July. Double-downed in October. Still holding it.

Misery loves company. Please share!

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1) after accumulating savings for several years, put them in the stock market in 2007

2) three years of my life and opportunity cost in a failed startup

A very big jar of pennies that I had for years that I dumped into a coinstar machine.

Google reports "when you use a Coinstar machine and want to get cash for your coins, they take 11.9% off the top. Basically this is $12 for every $100 in coins you deposit. This number varies from store to store as they might subsidize the processing fee, but this is the standard fee as indicated by Coinstar." Holding a hoard of pennies may be foolish, but paying a 12% fee to get rid of them seems outrageous.

Personal coin counting and wrapping machines and tools are available from Amazon and elsewhere. Many banks will only accept deposits of rolled coins from their customers; they will often supply the coin wrappers. A roll of pennies has 50 coins.

Hoarding is not a good investment strategy. Getting out of pennies is costly.

In my case it was a last minute decision before moving - "oh, are we packing that?" I think the Coinstar fee was less than 8-9% at the time and I'm not sure if they offered "fee-free" digital gift cards yet.

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