Your Best Investment Ever
 

I was just thinking about a stock purchase i never made (goto.com in 2000). i talked and talked about how i needed to buy the stock, and i never pulled the trigger. i even wrote up a little report on the company/business and gave it to a few friends who subsequently bought the stock. it was a slam dunk and, due largely to laziness, i missed it.

So I can live through others who have actually pulled the trigger on something good...

What was your best investment ever? it can be a stock, or a home (though this is kind of boring), or a baseball card or an antique desk, whatever. return on ivestment as a percentage would be good to know, but dollar figures would be even better.


[I'm counting on you $16k warren buffet guys for some great answers]

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

The $50 I put in Party [Censored].

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

Well aside from pok*r which I've had a 900% return on investment in my first year. That is also a time investment, not just money so I guess it's not the same.

The only other monetary investments I've made have been 401(k) started last year and has only gotten me about +3% thusfar, and a mutual fund I bought 6 years ago that has averaged a little over 2% over the last 6 years.

I suck at investing!

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

this is not a poker question, obviously. didn't think i would need to state that in OOT.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

[ QUOTE ]
I was just thinking about a stock purchase i never made (goto.com in 2000). i talked and talked about how i needed to buy the stock, and i never pulled the trigger. i even wrote up a little report on the company/business and gave it to a few friends who subsequently bought the stock. it was a slam dunk and, due largely to laziness, i missed it.

So I can live through others who have actually pulled the trigger on something good...

What was your best investment ever? it can be a stock, or a home (though this is kind of boring), or a baseball card or an antique desk, whatever. return on ivestment as a percentage would be good to know, but dollar figures would be even better.


[I'm counting on you $16k warren buffet guys for some great answers]

[/ QUOTE ]

You should also allow investments whose return is measured in utility.

For instance, my John Deere mower w/bagger was an awesome investment, from a utility standpoint. (just an example...jeez)

My money grip which has utility approaching infinite now, since I was able to rid myself of my Costanza wallet.


Financial investments:
I dabbled in daytrading for a while, and bought a 'penny stock' that increased in value over 1200% before I sold.
In 2 days.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

What is the ticker for goto.com?

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

[ QUOTE ]
What is the ticker for goto.com?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was wondering the same thing. I was also wondering whether any of his friends got out before the stock came crashing down. It doesn't seem to exist anymore. Maybe the stock got bought out by a larger company. Based on the look of the goto.com website, it can't be worth very much.

Only link I could find.

EDIT: Found another one, dated 8/21/00. Nice sure thing, there. Perhaps not buying was the OP's best investment?

http://www.geocities.com/tehbrick/goto.jpg

Link

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

The $10K I spent on my wife's engagement ring.

(cue schmaltzy Hallmark music)

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

The $2.99 I spent on a deck of Hank Williams Jr. playing cards. I have not and will not resell these but they are easily the best investment I have made.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

[ QUOTE ]
What is the ticker for goto.com?


[/ QUOTE ]

Evan - It has now been absorbed into Yahoo. It was, at the time GOTO, then switched to OVER. Haven't looked at a chart in a while, so don't know what info is currently available.


It was founded by Bill Gross/Idealab and was one of their only businesses that actually was a business. The pay per click advertising model has proven to be second, perhaps only to ebay as a pure-play consumer related web business/industry and has thrown the entire advertising world on its ear.

google had no idea how to monetize search until they decided to knock off this idea. paid search now accounts for the huge majority of their revenue.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

dude - wrong chart - timeframe is off. This was around JAN/FEB/MAR 2001 at $3.00-$5.00 IIRC. find charts around then if you can.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

BTW, this is about YOUR investments, not mine. I already admitted failure.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

Bought a house in SD. Sold it 2 years later for a 71% profit.

does that count?
FishNChips

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

Unless you live in the midwest, you have probably never heard of The Fifth Third Bank. I received some when my grandmother died, in lieu of cash. That was in 1985.

FITB
It's done pretty well. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

[ QUOTE ]
The $10K I spent on my wife's engagement ring.

(cue schmaltzy Hallmark music)

[/ QUOTE ]
same for me...but she also makes more than me, so my answer fits the OP's intent [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

I'm not a big-time investor, but I sunk ~$5K into a whopping 50 shares of AAPL late 1999. 6 years and two splits later, it appears to have done well. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Too bad the same can't be said for most of the other stocks in my meager portfolio.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

The $40 I spent on a really good fake ID my freshman year at school. I can't even begin to estimate how much use I got out of that, but suffice it to say that that $40 went much, much further than any expenditure before or since in terms of maximizing utility.

Other than that, some Monsanto stock I got from my parents when I graduated high school. Sold it off earlier this year for a nice gain.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

Bought a condo in 1999, just off the beach in CT, for 112k.
Sold it in 2004 for 210k.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

i bought 1000 shares of AAPL at 23$. just for note it's at 72 right now, after a split.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

Best investment ever - Panera Bread at $7. Sold out at $50. Regretted it ever since.

Worst investment never made - Had $1000 in 1980 and wanted to buy something. Since I wasn't 18 yet, told my dad to ask his broker about it. Said it was too risky, I should invest in this Canadian gold mining stock, which today is worth all of $4. The "too risky" stock - Genentech. That's when I learned that brokers know crap.

Worst sell - 1992, bought a quality high tech stock at 13 5/8. Come 1995 and I want to buy a new Celica, so I can sell one of two stocks. I pick this one, which is at 32. Unfortunately its name was Sun Microsystems and I wound up driving the world's only $500,000 Celica.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

good stuff MrMon.

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

When I was 9-11 I had a paper route that my parents made me save 50% of my income from. My dad got a new job and we moved and I abandoned the paper route but I had about $750 saved up that I invested into my dad's new company. Stock surged with the internet bubble and I cashed out about $7500 from my initial investment of $750. (Bought the stock at $20, sold at around $220). I think I was 14 or 15 when I got all my money and I proceeded to buy a car with it.

The stock is now below $10. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Your Best Investment Ever
 

Evan,

Yahoo bought Goto.com (renamed Overture) in 2003 for 1.6B.

Press Release