Trade What You See Not What You Think

Sunday 21 April 2013

What does it feel like to lose a lot of money (quickly)?

by James Altucher, Blogger, author, social media, investor

" When I built my first company in the 90s I did everything smart until I did everything stupid.

We built websites for entertainment companies. Bad Boy Records, Miramax, Time Warner, HBO, Sony, Disney, Loud Records, Interscope, on and on. Oh, and Con Edison.

Then I saw that kids in junior high school were learning HTML. So I sold the business. $15mm. About a year later. I hedged and cashed out. Sold all my shares. The $15 million was now cash.

I bought an apartment for millions. I rebuilt it. Feng Shui! I bought art. I played a lot of poker. I began investing in companies. A million here. A few hundred thousand there. One IPO I put $2 million in at $20 and watched it go to $0. They made wireless devices for deaf people. Huge market.

I started another company. CMGI, Allen & Co, Investcorp, Henry Kravis, and a billion others invested. I started a VC fund. I invested in more companies.

Then Internet stocks started to go down. This is ridiculous, I thought. The Internet is here to stay. I knew nothing about stocks or valuations or anything resembling rational thought. I doubled down. Then quadrupled down. Then 8-upled down.

From June 2000 until September, 2001 I probably lost $1 million a month. When anyone says, "this is ridiculous", that's code for, "I'm about to lose a lot of money". ( continue reading )