I think I had one too many Sam Adam's before I posted this tonight. I just reread the first post and it dawned on me how idiotic this thread was. My apologies.
You can't go beating yourself up because you can't find opportunities to make 3200%. That AMR trade has great risk, as they could have gone tits up like many other airlines did, then you get a 100% loss (or whatever you can salvage). The best trades/investments are when you buy distressed industries/companies. A good example right now are the sub prime lenders. Granted, giving loans to dead beats isn't the soundest of business models but they won't all go under. I bet if you find the strongest amongst them (with the strongest balance sheet), over time you'll do just fine. You'd ultimately be risking 100% of your investment but could make 500%+ in the long run.
Thanks. That's the gist of what I was getting at. I don't know if AMR then and NEWC (otc) now are in similar positions or not, but what you're saying makes perfect sense. I was thinking that AMR had shot up 32x without giving pause to the kind of risk it was frought with back then, when it was on the verge on Chapter 11, much like NEWC is now. But I am not willing to gamble $1.59 a share on NEWC. Like you said, everything is easier in retrospect.
you guys are missing out......when i first started trading stocks I was chasing 1 and 2% gains per day on a particular stock, and try to have my trading account up by about 2% at the end of the week, savy. Then I got into the options market, and the largest 1 day gain I've ever seen is 9200%, and it was on a Put option when Rack warned for it quarterly profit fall. check it <a href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_yg4O6RMVBjs/RgNliUmvyPI/AAAAAAAAAUg/gSY9D8ZiHjQ/s1600-h/Racks+Puts+up+9200%25.jpg"><img src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_yg4O6RMVBjs/RgNliUmvyPI/AAAAAAAAAUg/gSY9D8ZiHjQ/s1600-h/Racks+Puts+up+9200%25.jpg"></a>
All's I got to say is oil sector will get you the big returns since were going into the driving season. Especially in options like cvx, mro and oih, but unfortunately the premiums have gone up a bit in the last few days.
I don't know anyone who managed to hang on to anything long enough for that kind of return... consider buying MSFT or WMT a year out of their IPO. A handful of people may have done it who didn't work there, but I don't know any. To hold for that kind of return is to be willing to ride it up and down. Through the crashes or potential crashes. Through the sky is falling articles. Few people have that kind of risk tolerance. Once you sell, you likely will never buy it back, and certainly buy in at a different price. BUT... what goes up must come down, and nothing goes up forever. When do you sell that 3200% stock? If you managed to hold it that long, WOULD you sell it? Prolly not, and you WILL find stories of people who held through 2000 and it never headed back up again or went to 0. Stocks that became a 3200% stock: Global Crossing, Enron, ATT, Lucent (which IPO'd at $35 and last I looked was $2), Loral... all $100 stocks that took your investment to $0 from bankruptcy. There went your 3200%, but you did have it for a while. Hey, I BOUGHT CISCO at $102... still have that CISCO, so no matter what CISCO does, I have lost. I keep it to remind myself what not to do. I'm not going after 3200% stocks anymore. The flip side of this is I bought GLW at $3 in 2003. I finally sold it at $24 last year ago. It then went up to $29, and fell back down to the $22 it is now. Is it a good stock? It too is one of the best, but it's doing nothing right now and sitting at $22. There's better places for money. You know, there's no easy answers or everyone would be doing it, do a lot of homework on your companies. Focus on a small basket and know them as well as you know your hands. Then, instead of buying every pos that gets hyped, you'll get a better feel for timing the ones you KNOW and what they're doing. Course, this takes years of experience, and that basket will change according to market conditions. You will always add some up and coming stuff, but within your risk tolerance (I don't consider GROW a risk at all. Just EXTREMELY volatile as AMD once was). I don't think OTC is where it's at... because there's risk, and then there's insanity. It's like playing Russian Roulette... if you get lucky once, you just keep going til you get unlucky? Of course you will. No one learns a lesson til they lose. 3200% gains are possible, but you will never be able to plan for it. If you are the type that can get the 3200 returns, you will also be the type to follow it into 0% again in bankruptcy. Plan for the 5%-20% a month if you can. That's realistic.
Gentlemen Dell in 90's for 10 years have made more as 100000% or 1000 time return (split adjusted) Your respectfully
It can happen especially in periods like 2003 but it is almost impossible to know beforehand which stock will run most. Back in 2003 I made a little experiment by throwing a few thousand euros on two stocks with crappy fundamentals with the only criterion being that both traded at 0.30 euros region and were volatile enough. The first gone to 2.40 in a few months and the second practically remained unchanged. Both still have crappy fundamentals.