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How does one get over the frustration of not having invested? It’s particularly acute for me because I made a serious plan for my brother and me to put our ent

How does one get over the frustration of not having invested? It’s particularly acute for me because I made a serious plan for my brother and me to put our entire inheritance on one stock intending to level our money up by an order of magnitude (6 figures to 7) and achieve financial independence. I chose TSLA in January 2018 as the stock with the highest probability of going up by an order of magnitude; we were looking for the best time to buy; I said in August 2018 that I thought a low of 200 was plausible, on a time scale of months, before going up to the hoped-for $650B market cap in a decade. TSLA hit 200 in May 2019, nine months after I made that prediction. I was trying to avoid looking at the stock market to cut the risk of overreacting to trivia, and didn’t see it. But my brother was watching, he saw TSLA hit 200 — and he didn’t say anything about it. We’d worked on this project for most of 2018, and then in 2019 my prediction, my only low price prediction, happened: and my partner in the project simply took no action. And we missed the whole thing completely. Today, three years from the inaugural discussion of this strategy in January 2018, we would have $11,500,000 and our lives would be transformed. Putting our inheritance on TSLA aiming for an order-of-magnitude increase was my exact strategy. I made an uncannily perfect call of 200 (split-adjusted 40) as the lowest price we would see. My brother did not help me at all; and now every day I feel anger over this, I feel he lied to me about his support for our joint project, he has no sensible explanation for his lack of action (“I thought you probably already knew” and even less sensible excuses). Financial losses on the stock market can cause lots of hard feelings, and missed opportunities can too. How does one cope with this?

naveen99 6y ago
There are opportunities all the time. Go look at the chart for AMD, Netflix, aaple. Go apply your learning skills from computers to the market. Don’t look at the past but to learn.
- kadonoishi 6y ago
  Yep. That’s the right response. Put the past behind, and move forward productively. The reason I posted this on HN is that it’s hard to muster the emotional wherewithal to do that after such a setback. I thought comments from this community, where the people here are capable of understanding the issues, could help.
matsemann 6y ago
Just because it would have turned out good in hindsight doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid idea. If you had invested and lost it all, how would your brother have treated you? Why blame and be angry on him? And you never know if you would have sold earlier. Like all people saying "wish I bought bitcoin back then I would be so rich now!". No, you wouldn't. You would have cashed out when that $1k was $10k, not daring hold to $1M.
- kadonoishi 6y ago
  > Just because it would have turned out good in hindsight doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid idea. The evidence confirms the the accuracy of my predictions. It’s not empirical to brush aside evidence because it’s inconsistent with your prior. If you don’t sharply revise your prior with new evidence, it might be that your P(X | ~A) term is too large. You might be overestimating the probability that I would be right when your prior said it was a stupid idea. Instead it might be very unlikely for me to pick the best stock out of 3000 when you don’t think it’s possible for me to do that, so your idea that it’s not possible for me to do that is off. Your prior was off, and if you’re a Bayesian you now need to update your prior sharply. My argument, expressed repeatedly to my brother over the course of 2018, was that the American stock market regularly turns up stocks that increase by an order of magnitude or two, and in a subset of cases it’s reasonably possible to spot that ahead of time. Pop quiz: name 3 stocks that have gone up by an order of magnitude, over any time frame in history. Pretty much anyone familiar with stocks could do this. Follow-up, out of those, name one where you think you could reasonably have predicted it in time to invest. Most people will readily come up with one where, yeah, reasonably, you could tell at the time. My strategy was based on taking these facts seriously. It was further based on the observation that it’s easier to make one good decision than five or ten. My brother’s and my situation with an inheritance, where the money was not committed, where we could afford to lose it without dying, gave us an opportunity to make one good decision and thus end all personal financial concerns forever. > If you had invested and lost it all, how would your brother have treated you? We discussed that contingency. If we’d invested it all and lost, my brother had a solid backup plan where he’d be okay, and I did as well. This inheritance was available to invest. > Why blame and be angry on him? My brother repeatedly expressed his support for this plan. I blame and am angry because he consistently expressed support for this plan through most of 2018, then failed to act in 2019 when he needed to take concrete action in support of the plan. > And you never know if you would have sold earlier. Like all people saying "wish I bought bitcoin back then I would be so rich now!". No, you wouldn't. You would have cashed out when that $1k was $10k, not daring hold to $1M. The stated plan was to hold to a pre-split price of 3800 or 6000, based on Elon Musk’s commitments to meet specific market cap goals laid out in his 2018 compensation package. We were prepared to hold til 2028. TSLA is now at a pre-split price of 4400, in the range of our goal price, so we’d now be trying to figure out the exact right time to sell.
bidirectional 6y ago
You spent a year working on a 'project' to invest your entire inheritance in a single stock, while refusing to monitor the market itself? Your brother sounds like he wasn't really on board with the plan, which is the prudent, sensible course of action.
- kadonoishi 6y ago
  > You spent a year working on a 'project' to invest your entire inheritance in a single stock, while refusing to monitor the market itself? This was a difficult project. After two serious runs at buying TSLA in 2018, where we got to the brink and then backed off, I made a strategic mistake. I was concerned about the risk of me overreacting to trivial events, so I restricted my intake of stock market information to reduce that risk. My mistake was, I put in too heavy of a filter. My mistake is what created the opportunity for my brother to substantively contribute. He could have ridden to the rescue of our joint project by mentioning it to me when TSLA hit 200. I had repeatedly opined in August 2018 that it seemed possible for TSLA to fall as low as 200 before climbing to the hoped-for 3800 or 6000 in a decade. My brother saw TSLA hit 200 in May 2019, but he didn’t see fit to mention it. > Your brother sounds like he wasn't really on board with the plan, Yes, in hindsight, you’re right that my brother wasn’t really on board with the plan. All I can say is that he gave every indication that he _was_ on board. It appears to me that he lied in my face. This speaks to family issues that aren’t going to be of interest to HN so I’ll say no more, except to note that missed investment opportunities are a thing that can foreground classic human problems. > which is the prudent, sensible course of action. Bold action when opportunity presents is a component of that, in a broader view.
kadonoishi 6y ago
Thanks guys, the HackerNews community produced the 3 immediate responses, expressed quite clearly. Respect for this community +3.
- kadonoishi 6y ago
  Sorry, matsemann worked in two, so you folks produced the 4 immediate responses. Respect for this community +4.

naveen99 6y ago

There are opportunities all the time. Go look at the chart for AMD, Netflix, aaple. Go apply your learning skills from computers to the market. Don’t look at the past but to learn.

kadonoishi 6y ago
Yep. That’s the right response. Put the past behind, and move forward productively. The reason I posted this on HN is that it’s hard to muster the emotional wherewithal to do that after such a setback. I thought comments from this community, where the people here are capable of understanding the issues, could help.

matsemann 6y ago

Just because it would have turned out good in hindsight doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid idea. If you had invested and lost it all, how would your brother have treated you? Why blame and be angry on him? And you never know if you would have sold earlier. Like all people saying "wish I bought bitcoin back then I would be so rich now!". No, you wouldn't. You would have cashed out when that $1k was $10k, not daring hold to $1M.

kadonoishi 6y ago
> Just because it would have turned out good in hindsight doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid idea. The evidence confirms the the accuracy of my predictions. It’s not empirical to brush aside evidence because it’s inconsistent with your prior. If you don’t sharply revise your prior with new evidence, it might be that your P(X | ~A) term is too large. You might be overestimating the probability that I would be right when your prior said it was a stupid idea. Instead it might be very unlikely for me to pick the best stock out of 3000 when you don’t think it’s possible for me to do that, so your idea that it’s not possible for me to do that is off. Your prior was off, and if you’re a Bayesian you now need to update your prior sharply. My argument, expressed repeatedly to my brother over the course of 2018, was that the American stock market regularly turns up stocks that increase by an order of magnitude or two, and in a subset of cases it’s reasonably possible to spot that ahead of time. Pop quiz: name 3 stocks that have gone up by an order of magnitude, over any time frame in history. Pretty much anyone familiar with stocks could do this. Follow-up, out of those, name one where you think you could reasonably have predicted it in time to invest. Most people will readily come up with one where, yeah, reasonably, you could tell at the time. My strategy was based on taking these facts seriously. It was further based on the observation that it’s easier to make one good decision than five or ten. My brother’s and my situation with an inheritance, where the money was not committed, where we could afford to lose it without dying, gave us an opportunity to make one good decision and thus end all personal financial concerns forever. > If you had invested and lost it all, how would your brother have treated you? We discussed that contingency. If we’d invested it all and lost, my brother had a solid backup plan where he’d be okay, and I did as well. This inheritance was available to invest. > Why blame and be angry on him? My brother repeatedly expressed his support for this plan. I blame and am angry because he consistently expressed support for this plan through most of 2018, then failed to act in 2019 when he needed to take concrete action in support of the plan. > And you never know if you would have sold earlier. Like all people saying "wish I bought bitcoin back then I would be so rich now!". No, you wouldn't. You would have cashed out when that $1k was $10k, not daring hold to $1M. The stated plan was to hold to a pre-split price of 3800 or 6000, based on Elon Musk’s commitments to meet specific market cap goals laid out in his 2018 compensation package. We were prepared to hold til 2028. TSLA is now at a pre-split price of 4400, in the range of our goal price, so we’d now be trying to figure out the exact right time to sell.

bidirectional 6y ago

You spent a year working on a 'project' to invest your entire inheritance in a single stock, while refusing to monitor the market itself? Your brother sounds like he wasn't really on board with the plan, which is the prudent, sensible course of action.

kadonoishi 6y ago
> You spent a year working on a 'project' to invest your entire inheritance in a single stock, while refusing to monitor the market itself? This was a difficult project. After two serious runs at buying TSLA in 2018, where we got to the brink and then backed off, I made a strategic mistake. I was concerned about the risk of me overreacting to trivial events, so I restricted my intake of stock market information to reduce that risk. My mistake was, I put in too heavy of a filter. My mistake is what created the opportunity for my brother to substantively contribute. He could have ridden to the rescue of our joint project by mentioning it to me when TSLA hit 200. I had repeatedly opined in August 2018 that it seemed possible for TSLA to fall as low as 200 before climbing to the hoped-for 3800 or 6000 in a decade. My brother saw TSLA hit 200 in May 2019, but he didn’t see fit to mention it. > Your brother sounds like he wasn't really on board with the plan, Yes, in hindsight, you’re right that my brother wasn’t really on board with the plan. All I can say is that he gave every indication that he _was_ on board. It appears to me that he lied in my face. This speaks to family issues that aren’t going to be of interest to HN so I’ll say no more, except to note that missed investment opportunities are a thing that can foreground classic human problems. > which is the prudent, sensible course of action. Bold action when opportunity presents is a component of that, in a broader view.

kadonoishi 6y ago

Thanks guys, the HackerNews community produced the 3 immediate responses, expressed quite clearly. Respect for this community +3.

kadonoishi 6y ago
Sorry, matsemann worked in two, so you folks produced the 4 immediate responses. Respect for this community +4.