My Biggest Money Mistake Ever! (I Lost Millions)

I've lost millions of dollars waiting for price dips in the stock market that never came and for waiting for price dips in the price of Bitcoin that did come, but I chickened out and I didn't pull the trigger. Here's a story of both because in both cases, I lost millions of dollars. Okay, the first was in either 2014 or 2016, Bondgar Corporation had sold either the first or second time. Um, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was sitting at 15,300. I'll always remember that number. Dow Dow Jones Industrial Average is at 15,300. Now it's above 40,000. Uh, so it's roughly tripled since then. But I told my financial adviser that because the last recession was in 2008 and 2009 and it had been quite a few years since that recession and that I thought we were likely closer to the next recession rather than away from the last recession that I thought my portfolio should be uh invested conservatively waiting for the next big market downturn in the stock market and then I would ratchet up the risk and uh invest in much riskier portfolios with much more upside. They advised me against that and the advice they had is they said look you can wait for a 30% or a 40% downturn in the stock market and it may come but by the time it comes you may be correcting off a number so high that the price never gets close to the price you can pay for it today. Ultimately that's exactly what played out. The recession that I thought might come a few years later never came. And finally, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 20,000, I finally went to my financial adviser, told them I had made a mistake, and to go ahead and ratchet up the risk for my portfolio to take advantage of, you know, broad-based stock market exposure instead of the much uh more conservative portfolio I had been in. And at that point, I had been in that portfolio for like three or four years. But the difference in return over the entire life of the portfolio between being aggressively invested and being not aggressively invested was more than a million dollars. So I literally lost more than a million dollars trying to outsmart the stock market by getting a little bit more upside by waiting for a dip in the price of the stock market that never came. What I should have done at that time back in either 2014 or 2016 is exactly what I recommend people do with Bitcoin right now, which is buy as much of it as you can as soon as conceivably possible and sit on it for as long as conceivably possible. That was the advice I should have given myself back then. Again, I had not discovered Bitcoin back then. I wish I had. I'd have a lot more Bitcoin if I did. That happened in 2017. So, this was before I discovered Bitcoin. um or at least before I took it seriously and actually bought any. Um so anyway, the same thing happened when I initially got into Bitcoin in 2017. So the price at that time was uh you know I bought quite a bit of Bitcoin around 9,000 10,000 you know uh cheapest Bitcoin I ever bought was 6,400 but most of it was probably in the 9 or $10,000 range. Uh but uh I remember specifically thinking, okay, I bought enough Bitcoin around $9,000 that if the price ever drops in half, meaning I was waiting for a 50% price dip down to $4,500, I'm going to buy a substantial amount of Bitcoin at $4,500. But of course, the price actually in that case, it did drop, but I didn't pull the trigger. And the reason I didn't pull the trigger is the same reason that almost everybody who's waiting for a price drop doesn't pull the trigger. And that's because the price is dropping. And when the price of something is dropping, it's scary. You assume that there's probably a good reason that it's dropping. There's probably something everyone else knows that you don't know, and it's going to keep dropping. So, I chickenened out. I chickenened out and I did not buy all the Bitcoin at $4,500 that I had told myself I was going to buy. Now, of course, I had good reasons. I was locked in some very expensive political campaigns at the time. I was afraid I was going to run short on cash for the political stuff I was involved in. I didn't want to take the volatility risk of Bitcoin. You know, I had all the usual excuses, but the truth is I had the money and I should have bought a bunch of Bitcoin at 4,500 a coin and I didn't. And the number one reason is because I did not have the conviction to pull the trigger. And so it was dropping. I was afraid it was dropping for a good reason that I didn't understand. I was afraid it was going to go lower. I figured I could always buy it later. And then by the time it was very clear that it would never be 4,500 ever again. I mean, literally, by the time I really realized that I had missed out, the price was above $20,000. And I thought, well, if I didn't buy it at $4,500, why would I turn around and buy it at uh at 20,000 if I didn't buy it at 4,500? So, in truth, I would have been way better off just buying as much Bitcoin at $9,000 as I could. I outsmarted myself by waiting for 4,500. That did come and I didn't pull the trigger. And again, that cost me millions of dollars. Once again, my experience was repeated. In addition to losing more than a million dollars in the stock market by waiting for a dip that never happened, I lost again more than a million dollars in Bitcoin because I waited for a dip that did happen and then I chickened out and didn't pull the trigger when it actually came, which is what almost always happens when people are waiting for dips. The dip either never happens and I just did a video a minute ago that covers the statistical probabilities. So the statistical probabilities which are between 3x to 5x against you if you are waiting for a dip meaning you are statistically much better off not waiting for dips because your probability of ending up ahead economically if you wait for dips is three to five times worse than just buying it at whatever the price currently is. So that assumes you actually do pull the trigger if the price dips. that assumes with absolute perfect uh finesse that you follow through on a your commitment that you're going to buy after a certain price dip. Since the vast majority of people don't follow through when they say they're going to buy a price dip, the actual statistical probability you win by waiting for a price dip is actually much lower. So instead of being three to five times odds worse, it's probably more like 10 to 20x odds against you because the mo most of the people who are waiting for a price dip don't actually pull the trigger when the price dip comes. They're scared. The price is dropping. They think the price is going to drop more. Whatever dip they were waiting for, they say now the dip has to be bigger. If they said they were waiting for a 5% drop or their magic number was $88,000, well suddenly now their magic number is $75,000. and instead of a 5% drop or a 10% drop, now they want to see a 10 or a 20% drop. They just never pull the trigger, just like me, and they miss out on huge amounts of money. So, please learn from my mistakes. Uh, if you're waiting for dips in the world of Bitcoin, again, I have lost millions of dollars waiting for dips that either didn't happen or that did happen and I didn't pull the trigger. Please don't outsmart yourself for from ending up with a decent amount of Bitcoin. In my opinion, at $105,000 per Bitcoin, it is a fantastic time to buy Bitcoin. Could it go lower? Of course. But if it does, you probably are not going to pull the trigger anyway. And no matter what your magic number is that it might go lower to, it probably won't get there. And as a result, my advice, which I wish I had taken myself when I was in the exact same position that many of you are right now, my advice is to do what I should have done, which is I should have just closed my eyes, bought as much Bitcoin as I could at $9,000. And heck, if it did dip, I should have bought more. But I should not have waited for that dip because I had the capital. I could have pulled the trigger at $9,000. And frankly, I could own a lot more $9,000 Bitcoin than I do. My average Bitcoin price is probably around $35,000. And that's because in addition to buying a bunch of cheap Bitcoin between $6,000 and 9,000 and $12,000, I ended up having to buy a lot of much more expensive Bitcoin at 30,000, 40,000, 60,000, 80,000, 120,000 to try to get as much Bitcoin as I wanted to own because I didn't pull the trigger back when I could have when the prices were a lot cheaper. And that cycle just repeats with everyone. So, learn from my mistakes. Buy as much Bitcoin as you can. Sit on it for as long as possible. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the only way you win.