Key takeaways
Losing investments can be great teachers.
Nobody starts out as a great investor. Property investing is a learned skill.
Every investor makes mistakes - Losses are a natural and normal result of making investment decisions
Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.
Don’t invest in anything you don’t fully understand.
One of my early investments was a complete loss.
I know that doesn’t make for ego pleasing conversation from someone who’s meant to be an investment expert, but it’s the truth.
However, I’m keen to tell you the story of how I lost 100% of my invested capital many years ago, way back in the 1970s, and the investment mistakes I made which created this disastrous result.
But first I want to explain the 2 main reasons why I’m sharing this story.
1. Losing investments can be great teachers
Sure you could learn from the investment mistakes you make, but why not learn from other people’s investment errors so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes yourself.
Most investors pay the market a huge learning fee in the way of mistakes.
Studies show that around 50% of investors who buy an investment property sell up in the first 5 years.
Clearly, they’ve done something wrong.
And most investors who stay in the game don’t make it past their first or second property, so clearly they’re not doing things right.
So why not learn how to avoid their common mistakes?
2. Losses are a natural and normal result of making investment decisions
Don’t be so hard on yourself when things don’t go as planned because the key to long term success is what you do when this occurs and the lessons you learn from your mistakes, so you don’t repeat them.
The problem is, that many investors just seem to keep repeating the same bad investment behaviours.
So here is the story of my big investment mistake where I lost 100% of my investment capital
Go ahead and laugh at my foolishness.
Yes…I should have known better.
You see…I already owned a few investment properties at the time, but I was in a hurry to get rich quick.
Interestingly this story is good evidence that I wasn’t born a great investor.
Investing is a learned skill, and I hope the lessons contained in this story will help you avoid the mistakes I made.
You see…I was offered the opportunity to invest in a Gold Mine.
In fact, one of my friends, Brian, had invested the vast sum of $5,000 (remember it was the 1970s and that was a lot of money) into a venture that was resurrecting an old disused gold mine in Wedderburn, near Ballarat in Victoria.
Of course, my initial reaction was to tell him how silly he was. How he’d lose his money.
But Brian asked me to speak with the promoter, explaining that he tells a compelling story.
So I did.
I still remember it well…I can picture it in my mind’s eye.
One Sunday morning a man called Terry came to our home and described how with the price of gold rising and using new technology it was now viable to reopen an old disused gold mine near Ballarat where the Gold Rush occurred in the 1800s.
He had budgets and profit projections, diagrams and plans; but things changed completely when he took a shiny nugget of gold out of his pocket and placed it in my hand.
I’d never really seen gold before.
I’d never held a nugget of gold in my hand.
He told a compelling story of how I could double my money quickly investing in his company – The Asian Pacific Mining Corporation (what an impressive name!) – and how I’d receive dividends for years.
My greed glands began working overtime as I swallowed his story – hook, line, and sinker.
The end result was I invested $5,000 of my money and of course, I lost it all.
Just to put things into perspective, in those days a family car (the Holden Kingswood) cost around $2,000, so $5,000 was a lot of money.
What happened was that my money and that of all the other investors was squandered by Terry’s into frivolous start-up costs meaning there was none left to invest in the mine.
My investment decision was one big mistake from the beginning.
Here are a few of the more obvious mistakes I made with this investment:
- I gave my money to a virtual stranger without doing enough due diligence. Sure my friend Brian and a few other friends had already invested with him, but I didn’t look into the “opportunity” enough. Of course, it was much harder to do that in those days as there was no internet.
- I invested in something I didn’t understand
- I bought a story rather than investment fundamentals.
- I was lured by the opportunity of making quick and easy money
- In reality, I was speculating, not investing and risking money I couldn’t afford to lose.
- I had no investment strategy – just a desire to get rich quick.
I learned many lessons from this experience including:
- Not everything that glitters is gold
- Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.
- Don’t invest in anything you don’t fully understand.
I knew nothing about gold mining, so I was speculating rather than investing. I had no competitive advantage and there was no mathematical expectation for my investment strategy. 
One of the worst things that can happen to an investor is to get it right the first time. I thought I was smarter than I was when in reality my investment success so far was in large part to a rising property market – a boom that made me look smarter than I was.- Don’t become overconfident -the market will soon humble you.
- I didn’t understand the incentives of the so-called “advisor” who really had a vested interest which created biases in the recommendations he gave me.
One of the worst things that can happen to an investor is to get it right the first time. I thought I was smarter than I was when in reality my investment success so far was in large part to a rising property market – a boom that made me look smarter than I was.I could add even more mistakes to this list, but I think you get the point.
Looking back, one other mistake I should mention that occurred after the event was blaming outside factors for my investment failure, rather than evaluating what really happened and owning up to my failure.
Looking back, this mistake was a big blow to my ego
I had to explain my loss to my then-wife.
It was embarrassing.
But it provided me with an opportunity to learn some great lessons.
My question for you is: how many of the above investment mistakes are you making?
How much are mistakes like this costing you?
One of the key factors to my investment success is that I always try to learn from my mistakes.
In my early years of investing, I tried to constantly improve my investment skills by studying each loss or examining an investment that didn’t perform as well as it should have, to understand what went wrong with my strategy, and then I set up disciplines to ensure I didn’t make the same mistake again.
This led me to devise my now proven, time tested, investment strategies that take the emotion out of my investing – my Top-Down Approach and my Six Stranded Strategic Approach.
In fact it led me to developing an investment Strategy - I didn't really have one before.
And that's why we always start by developing a customised, personalised strategic property plan for all our clients at Metropole long before we even even start talking about property.
The strategy has to fit in with their current position, lifestyle, the endgame they want to achieve, their timeframes and their risk profile.
In retrospect…
My worst investment mistake was a cheap lesson
This investment was the first of many learning fees I’ve paid to the market over the years.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes and paid a lot of learning fees during my journey to investment success.
It’s much easier for investors nowadays – you don’t need to do it on your own.
There are plenty of good, independent, property strategists out there to help you, but that wasn’t the case when I started investing.
Unfortunately, there are still as many sharks out there too.
Maybe they don’t have the unethical intentions Terry had, but they have vested interests.
They represent builders and developers but are disguising themselves as advisers or buyers’ agents when they’re really representing someone else and not you.
What about you?
What can you learn from my story?
Are you making any of these mistakes, or are you using any of these excuses to dismiss your investment losses as not reflecting a fundamental flaw in your strategy?
As I said at the beginning of this article, every investor makes mistakes.
They’re a normal part of the investment journey.
So while the property markets will create significant wealth for many Australians, statistics show that 50% of those who buy an investment property sell up in the first five years.
And of those who stay in the investment game, 92% never get past their first or second property.
That's because attaining wealth doesn’t just happen, it’s the result of a well executed plan.
Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now!
Just to make things clear...buying an investment property is NOT a strategy!
It's important to start with the end game in mind and understand what you need and what you want to achieve.
And then you have to build a plan, a strategy to get there.
The property you eventually buy will be the physical manifestation of a whole lot of decisions that you will make, and they must be made in the right order.
That's because property investment is a process, not an event.
If you’re a beginner looking for a time tested property investment strategy or an established investor who’s stuck or maybe you just want an objective second opinion about your situation, I suggest you allow the team at Metropole to build you a personalised, customised Strategic Property Plan
When you have a Strategic Property Plan you’re more likely to achieve the financial freedom you desire because we’ll help you:
- Define your financial goals with clarity.
- Assess whether your goals are realistic within your timeline.
- Track your progress and ensure your property portfolio is working for you, not the other way around.
- Maximise your wealth creation through smart property investments.
- Identify and mitigate risks you may not have considered.
And the real benefit is you’ll be able to grow your wealth through your property portfolio faster and more safely than the average investor.
Click here now and learn more about this service and discuss your options with us.
Your Strategic Property Plan should contain the following components:
- An asset accumulation strategy
- A manufacturing capital growth strategy
- A rental growth strategy
- An asset protection and tax minimisation strategy
- A finance strategy including long-term debt reduction and…
- A living off your property portfolio strategy
Click here now and learn more about this service and discuss your options with us.
Further, to minimise them and maximise the investment results you need to treat your property investment like a business and critically evaluate your property’s performance.
Too often I see investors holding on to underperforming properties in the hope that one day they’ll come good.
They say: “Sure this property isn’t going up in value, but it’s not costing me anything.”
Wrong!
What they are losing out on is the opportunity cost.
The opportunity of owning better properties.
If you can only own 3 or 4 properties, then you must own the best 3 or 4 properties you can afford.
Accept responsibility for how your investments are performing and figure out what is making them underperform so you can rectify the issues or avoid the same error in the future.
Taking self-responsibility for your investment performance is the first step to improving your investment strategy so you can become a consistently profitable investor.
Nobody starts out as a great investor.
Property investing is a learned skill.
You now have indisputable proof that I began life as an investment sucker.
Few people have made more mistakes in their investment journey than I did.
In fact, I’ve often said I’m a real success at failure.
Yet, I’m a successful investor today, and it’s largely because I’ve learned from my mistakes.
I hope you’ve also learned something from my mistake.
