1 Thing I Wish I'd Known About the Stock Market When I First Started Investing
What is the most expensive habit a new investor can pick up? Taking quick profits on a company worth owning for decades.
Overview
There is a TD Ameritrade statement in my office from the mid-2000s that I keep meaning to throw away. I found it again last week. Instead of tossing it, I read the whole thing.
I was 29 in 2004 and buying stocks in whatever amounts I could scrape together. I grabbed 10 shares of Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) at about $15 each. People made fun of this buy around the water cooler, because Intel would surely crush the smaller challenger like a bug. I got out at $20 with a 33% gain in six months!
Details
But because the $150 trade worked, I learned the wrong lesson from it. Then I applied that misunderstanding dozens of times in the next couple of years. With a long-term mindset, that modest $150 AMD investment would be worth $5,000 as of Sept. 10, 2026 (despite spending a decade underwater).
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.