What was your worst financial decision?
It wasn’t really a decision so much as a deal I couldn’t do. It was about 1978 and I asked my bank manager for a £4,000 loan to sign the publishing rights for the songs of an unknown group called U2. He looked at me as if I were joking and turned me down. The rights to U2’s songs must be worth trillions now.
Umm, yes…..
Surtees nailed this in the 1830s and I think Reeves has also fallen into to the trap
‘Now, Buckram,’ said he, ‘I’ll tell you how it is. I’m deuced hard-up—regularly in Short’s Gardens. I lost eighteen ‘undred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, the best part of my year’s income, indeed; and I just want to hire two or three horses for the season, with the option of buying, if I like; and if you supply me well, I may be the means of bringing grist to your mill; you twig, eh?’
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Far more difficult is the task of conveying to our readers such information as will enable them to form an idea of our hero’s ways and means. An accommodating world—especially the female portion of it—generally attribute ruin to the racer, and fortune to the fox-hunter; but though Mr. Sponge’s large losses on the turf, as detailed by him to Mr. Buckram on the occasion of their deal or ‘job,’ would bring him in the category of the unfortunates; still that representation was nearly, if not altogether, fabulous. That Mr. Sponge might have lost a trifle on the great races of the year, we don’t mean to deny, but that he lost such a sum as eighteen hundred on the Derby, and seven on the Leger, we are in a condition to contradict, for the best of all possible reasons, that he hadn’t it to lose. At the same time we do not mean to attribute falsehood to Mr. Sponge—quite the contrary—it is no uncommon thing for merchants and traders—men who ‘talk in thousands,’ to declare that they lost twenty thousand by this, or forty thousand by that, simply meaning that they didn’t make it, and if Mr. Sponge, by taking the longest of the long odds against the most wretched of the outsiders, might have won the sums he named, he surely had a right to say he lost them when he didn’t get them.
In 2011 I was reading some papers and came across this thing called Bitcoin, which had been going a while but hadn’t attracted my attention.
It was then trading at about $2. I kept an eye on it and when, in a matter of weeks, it was at $15, I said to my wife that I was thinking of sticking a couple of grand into it, just speculatively.
But it was a bit dodgy looking, and two grand is still two grand, so I thought I wouldn’t bother.
If I’d have bought and then sold at the $70k-odd high I’d have made about $12 million.
🙂
(If I had bought I’m pretty sure I would have sold at $50-ish, so it’s even more hypothetical than it first appears.)
U2’s best albums were Boy, October and War. My doubts began to appear with The Unforgettable Fire and I hated The Joshua Tree. As a result, I have managed studiously to ignore them since 1989. So much so, in fact that on checking, I note that Bono has fallen off of my Kill List.
I refer you to the headline from the Babylon Bee: –
Study Finds No One Ever Actually Liked U2 It’s Just That Everyone Thought Everyone Else Did And No One Wanted To Speak Up And Make It Awkward.
I’ll just leave this here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8dZwXnMrRU
Which is worse, U2 or Oasis.
No I’m not your catterwaul you gobshite.