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I learned my lesson with a Datek online trading account in January of 2000. We had been married two years and were saving up to buy our first home. We had $30,000 saved up. "everyone" was making a killing on tech stocks.
I put $10,000 into an account. (hey honey it's only 1/3 of our savings) bought NVDA, YHOO, CNET, HD, and a few others.
If you look at the stock Market crash of January 2000 I opened my account like two days before that day it started crashing.
I also started moving money around lot. This is back when you woke up at 6am turned on your computer and Nescape "dialed in" to the internet with that screechy computer sound in the modem before you were connected.
My buddy gave me a "sick tip" on ELOT -- an online lottery company that used to be a telephone conference hardware company. I put most in there at $1.50 a share because it was "for sure going to hit $10 or more once the regulations for online lotteries opened up."
Nope.
Three years later I had 3,000 shares worth less than a penny a share. Selling them wasn't even enough to cover the $9.99 transaction fee.
I called Datek and asked them if they could just accept the sale amount as the fee. They said "Oh yeah we do this all the time"
Closed the account. Mutual funds and 401K ever since.
until this year.
I'm still doing OK since moving some bond money into a brokerage account in September, Long plays. I will be OK but damned if I'm going to repeat 2000 with the meme stocks or SPACS.
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