Small Investors Got Screwed

from the everyone-else-gets-a-slap-on-the-wrist dept

A good column pointing out that the biggest losers in the dot com fallout have been the small investors who lost all their money. On the other side, the investment banks and analysts are getting slaps on the wrist for their part in hyping up obvious duds. I understand where this is all coming from, however, it’s not like anyone held a gun to the heads of the small investors. They still had to make the choice of what to invest in (if they chose to invest at all). Sure, people made it seem like you were crazy if you didn’t dump all your money into dot coms, but the smart investor should know better. Yes, I think that analysts and investment banks were being unethical in many of their practices, and yes, individual investors got screwed in a lot of ways – but in the end, a lot of it still is their own fault.


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Comments on “Small Investors Got Screwed”

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2 Comments
Ed says:

Not an excuse but...

…a lot of respectable mutual funds (especially the ones I hold, it seems) had significant investments in companies that were tied, directly or indirectly, to the dot-com boom. With the amazing returns that were possible for a while a fund manager would lose investors if he stayed out of those investments. I didn’t invest directly in any shaky dot-coms, but the Janus funds I bought into had significant holdings in companies like Cisco, Dell and Priceline. If I had really had the foresight to put my money where my mouth was, I would have hedged some of the risker investments, like Priceline, by shorting it individually.

spongebrain says:

Re: Not an excuse but...

whatever,,,,those greedy investors ALL WERE SITTING ON GIANT GAINS>….GREEDY FUCKERS DIDNT SELL…NOW they complain…..fuck em….they deserve to lose it all….they rode the fuckers down one dollar at a time…jackasses….most people big guns’ed themselves….pile on their net worst near the top,,,blow away all gains…HAHAHHAAA

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