I Cut $135,715 Worth Of Losses In The Last 1.5 Months

Today (9 Dec), I sold another 3 of my legacy stocks (Sembcorp Marine, Marco Polo Marine, Yongnam) at a loss of $40,141. That brought the total loss from selling my legacy stocks to $135,715.

The below is a summary of all the failed investments that I have made in the early year of my investing journey and if you also own any one of them, I hope this article encourages you in some ways.

Old Chang Kee
Total Investment: $13,440 Sold for $11,073, Loss of $2,366 (17.60%)

SIA Engineering
Total Investment: $13,890, Sold for $7,290, Loss of $6,600 (47.52%)

Neratel
Total Investment: $25,633, Sold for $7,500, Loss of $18,133 (70.74%)

Dairy Farm
Total Investment: $10,880, Sold for $4,455, Loss of $6,425 (59.05%)

Singapore Press Holding (SPH)
Total Investment: $13,204, Sold at $7,080, Loss of $6,124 (46.38%)

Keppel Corp
Total Investment: $86,808, Sold for $52,852, Loss of $33,956 (39.12%)

Sembcorp Industries
Total Investment: $16,350, Sold for $8,089, Loss of $8,261 (50.53%)

Sembcorp Marine
Total Investment: $35,594 Sold for $4,137.87, Loss of $31,456.13 (88.37%)

Marco Polo Marine
Total Investment: $5,686, Sold for $1,232, Loss of $4,454 (78.33%)

Yongnam
Total Investment: $4,430, Sold for $198.15, Loss of $4,231.85 (95.53%)

I bought these stocks when my investing journey started in 2012, mostly through the recommendations of friends as well as strangers who shared on financial blogs and forums. I did not do much research on them and I bought them based on hype, fear of missing out (FOMO) and the fear of inflation eating up my savings in the bank.

When they started declining due to various reasons, I was still hopeful that they would one day recover, so I averaged down instead of cutting my loss and exiting my positions. When they kept dropping until a point of no return, I gave up averaging down and just let them be, and the losses just keep getting higher. I was probably in denial or lacked the courage to do anything about it. Major events like the oil price crash and the pandemic just made everything worse and the remaining value of these stocks just kept getting lesser with time.

So Why Cut $135k Of Losses Now?
The only reason that I am finally cutting most of my losses now is that this year has been a very profitable year in options trading and I have made more than this amount back through options trading. By cutting the losses, I am also freeing up capital to add to my trading account, which can help generate more profits for me, instead of them idling in these legacy stocks and losing value with time. It was a liberating feeling as I finally got rid of the baggage that I have been holding on to for years.

2 thoughts on “I Cut $135,715 Worth Of Losses In The Last 1.5 Months”

It certainly took a lot of courage! I applaud you for your kind sharing.

I recently realized a massive loss on a TSLA PUT option that i sold. It’s 1 day left to expiry and it’s already very deep in the money.

On the hindsight, upon option expiry day, the stock rose up way beyond my strike price and i regretted not rolling down my option if not i would have huat a lot because the premium was so high.

But my psychic was defeated and as a result i dare not not stomach the potential compound premium losses if the stock continue to tank after i roll…

The lessons i learnt is that one should be less aggressive when selling to open a contract when the macro is in downtrend.

And be more courageous to roll the option to the next expiry date.

But really at that moment i really dare not…lol

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Jason Cai says:

February 6, 2022 at 11:48 am

haha…it is always easier in theory and to look back on hindsight but trust the decision you make at that moment, it is the best you could have done. I also have a PUT contract on Tesla which was exercised recently (3 Feb). SP was $1.2k, minus the premium, the breakeven price was around 1.08k. In the worst case, if the share price keeps falling over the next few months, I intend to keep it for the long run because I believe Tesla is worth more than 1.08k in the long run. I will be selling covered calls on Tesla for the time being to further reduce my cost price.

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