A fortune missed... right under our noses

[VK3DRB]

Altium share price 23 March 2011: $0.09
Altium share price today: $21.35

Gain = 237 times . So invest $10K in 2011 and you would have $2.4 million today, not including dividends .

Altium is a bit like the banks in Australia. The customers don't make the money. The shareholders do. Yes there are risks. There is no money in designing PCB's besides a wage, but there are risks too - like losing your sanity or not being able to find a girlfriend.

I missed the Altium opportunity even though I am a long term user of Altium/Protel. What is wrong with me! I am not alone maybe... When Dave left Altium, he could have sold everything except the kitchen sink and thrown all his $ into Altium shares. But the electronics world would be poorer because there might have been would be no EEVBLOG. So there is more to life than just money.

So I suggest because you and I are more in the know than the average investor out there who knows nothing about technology, we watch out for opportunities in high tech sector that are right under our noses. But in the meantime, fellow travellers, just enjoy electronics for what it is .

[Ampera]

Stocks is a world of people upset they didn't invest in something, lead by people hoping they are investing in one of those somethings.

[CopperCone]

[Halcyon]

Stocks is a world of people upset they didn't invest in something, lead by people hoping they are investing in one of those somethings.

Same as crypto-currencies. There are still people out there who think buying into Bitcoin etc... will make them a decent profit. I'm not saying all crypto's are in the same leaky boat as Bitcoin, but most of them are.

[julianhigginson]

The risk in 2011 of buying altium shares at 9c was that they could have become worth nothing...

I've got enough of my immediate future riding on altium staying a going concern, without having to buy shares. :-)

[NiHaoMike]

Same as crypto-currencies. There are still people out there who think buying into Bitcoin etc... will make them a decent profit. I'm not saying all crypto's are in the same leaky boat as Bitcoin, but most of them are.

The days when it was easy to guarantee a win mining crypto are long over. In fact, I don't see any new investments in mining that I would be interested to get into, so it looks like my mining adventures are slowly coming to an end. I did manage to get something to help me remember the wonderful time I had playing in the field of mathematics, right as my chance to do so was starting to fade away.

[Cyberdragon]

Same as crypto-currencies. There are still people out there who think buying into Bitcoin etc... will make them a decent profit. I'm not saying all crypto's are in the same leaky boat as Bitcoin, but most of them are.

The days when it was easy to guarantee a win mining crypto are long over. In fact, I don't see any new investments in mining that I would be interested to get into, so it looks like my mining adventures are slowly coming to an end. I did manage to get something to help me remember the wonderful time I had playing in the field of mathematics, right as my chance to do so was starting to fade away.

Invest in home quantum computers then.

[Geoff-AU]

Altium share price 23 March 2011: $0.09
Altium share price today: $21.35

Gain = 237 times . So invest $10K in 2011 and you would have $2.4 million today, not including dividends .

On the same date (23 March 2011) Bitcoin was worth US$0.85
Bitcoin today is worth US$7,485

Gain = 8,805 times.  $10K would have netted you $88 million dollars.

Of course, hindsight is one of the worst things to use to look at investment.  If BTC had shit the bed or Altium had gone bankrupt you would have lost all of your $10,000.  Haven't really followed Altium's commercial situation but their share price was $6.60 in Feb 2000, so a 9 cent share price in 2011 looks like a pretty dumb investment opportunity to me.

[NiHaoMike]

I say the future is in cryptocurrencies that do useful work outside the cryptocurrency system, such as Curecoin and Foldingcoin. In particular, mining those coins helps find cures for cancer. As of right now, there's about 23k GPUs running Folding@Home. It would only take about 2% of the Simone Giertz subscribers, 5% of the EEVblog subscribers, or 7% of the SexyCyborg subscribers each adding one GPU to the pool to double the number of GPUs finding cures for cancer!

What we need is some incentive for the subscribers to actually do so, as in make a way for anyone to easily support their favorite content creators by simply entering a few values into the Folding@Home software and running it.

Just imagine if Bunnie Huang and Naomi Wu banded together to crowdfund the development of a FPGA or ASIC miner for Curecoin/Foldingcoin that's substantially more efficient than GPUs (let's ignore technical reasons why that's not likely), then the company making those gets record sales thanks to Naomi doing great marketing and Bunnie ensuring the product is user friendly. After that, cures for cancer are being found at record breaking rates and countless lives are saved!

[EEVblog]

Altium share price 23 March 2011: $0.09
Altium share price today: $21.35

Gain = 237 times . So invest $10K in 2011 and you would have $2.4 million today, not including dividends .

I considered investing my $20k payout in Altium shares at the time (April 2011)
I would have bailed out a lot of it when it hit x10 at $1 though, and maybe free run the rest.
But to be fair, no one saw the "the coup" coming that disposed Nick Martin and made this rise possible.

BTW, anyone who thinks Altium is a good buy at the moment at over $20 and a P/E ratio in the 60's is insane. It will get hammered in the next down-turn.

[EEVblog]

The risk in 2011 of buying altium shares at 9c was that they could have become worth nothing...

They could have under Nick Martin, there was a reason why they plummeted from $5 to 9 cents.
BUT it was at the time one of the rare "holy grail" shares were the cash value of the company practically equaled the market cap, AND they had zero debt! I knew this and should have invested something at least.
So risk was actually minimal that it could drop further, as the cash in the bank equaled the share price, so in theory it couldn't have gone lower. But Nick was famous for doing really crazy things.
With hindsight it was the buy of the decade, but you had to hold on for the entire rise.

[NiHaoMike]

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.

They're ALL right under your nose when you look back with the clarity of hindsight.

Good management is a key attribute to look for and listening to Dave's comments that didn't necessarily apply at the low point.

Even if you are lamenting an opportunity lost you have to ask yourself two questions. Would you have risked enough to change your life? Would you have stuck it out and not sold up before now? Without a strong case for investing in a company you'd just be gambling. Sometimes you'll win, most times you'll lose.

This free fanancial advice is worth twice what you paid for it.

When I started mining Perk, I, like many others, wished to have gotten in earlier when the profits were even more crazy. But then think about it and realize that the reason for why the mining profitability was so high is because it was relatively obscure. If everyone got in earlier, the profitability would not be anywhere as high.

At least I started mining earnhoney before it peaked and kept going until the difficulty increased to the point where my PC was not efficient enough to be profitable. Also got in early with a number of other coins like Realbucks, a few of which I'm still mining today.

[TheNewLab]

yup, and you could have bought Apple Computers for $12 per share. and watch it split so many times, you would be a billionaire..not millionaire, a billionaire.


Investing is always risky. So many things can go wrong on sure bets. 20/20 hindsight on stock buys, or bonds,  is pointless. The question is what do you want to risk your money invested din now?

real estate averages out over the long term, and right after a housing market crash is ideal time to buy, but do you have the funds to? Please, I used to advise investors and mange their funds.....

[TheNewLab]

Here, Here! woulda, shoulda, coulda....think , what are you going to do now? and are you willing to risk those funds you will be using for the investment?

[james_s]

BTW, anyone who thinks Altium is a good buy at the moment at over $20 and a P/E ratio in the 60's is insane. It will get hammered in the next down-turn.

As high as 60 sounds, it's downright reasonable compared to the P/E ratio of companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Some of those were up over 250 last I looked. This could be a catastrophic crash in the making.

[Bassman59]

real estate averages out over the long term, and right after a housing market crash is ideal time to buy, but do you have the funds to?

You can say that about any market. When the markets dumped core the first time Trump said he was going to put tariffs on goods, the geniuses said, “this is a great time to buy!” Except that nobody had the cash sitting around to do so. The only thing to do was to not sell and just ride it out.

[Bassman59]

BTW, anyone who thinks Altium is a good buy at the moment at over $20 and a P/E ratio in the 60's is insane. It will get hammered in the next down-turn.

As high as 60 sounds, it's downright reasonable compared to the P/E ratio of companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Some of those were up over 250 last I looked. This could be a catastrophic crash in the making.

Just for the record, AAPL’s P/E is 17.53 as of this posting. It’s a fucking bargain.

[EEVblog]

Even if you are lamenting an opportunity lost you have to ask yourself two questions. Would you have risked enough to change your life? Would you have stuck it out and not sold up before now?

As I mentioned, I would have at least pulled out my original $20k and gotten my money back at x10 return, who wouldn't have?
You have to remember too that it took over a year to get back to $1, another year to get back to $2, and then sat there for another year or more. It's been a 7 year run to get from 10c to $20, you have to be in this for the long game, and be lucky enough to ride one of the biggest and longest bull runs in market history.

Without a strong case for investing in a company you'd just be gambling. Sometimes you'll win, most times you'll lose.

In the case of Altium, I should have invested when the coup happened. Nick was ousted for a reason, and that was to stop the crazy decisions and make the company into a profitable one again and start pay dividends again. This wasn't hard with a company with zero debt, cash in the bank, a loyal mostly locked-in customer base, and is in the high margin software business.

[EEVblog]

Just for the record, AAPL’s P/E is 17.53 as of this posting. It’s a fucking bargain.

Unless the market crashes.

[james_s]

Unless the market crashes.

That's true of any stock, regardless of the P/E ratio. There are a handful of other tech stocks right now with absolutely absurd P/E ratios though and I cannot figure out why people push them up to such ridiculous levels.

[CNe7532294]

Unless the market crashes.

That's true of any stock, regardless of the P/E ratio. There are a handful of other tech stocks right now with absolutely absurd P/E ratios though and I cannot figure out why people push them up to such ridiculous levels.

One word: Delusion

Attention to the microcosms of the market, it's the most illogical thing if you're going big. Yet people are willing to throw themselves like lemmings in pure delusion.

Another thing, I highly recommend that the very first thing you do before anything is SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE and lastly SAVE. Even if you made money off of this, bitcoin, or whatever. SAVE at least some. Put it in currency, put it in gold, even put it in that one of a kind HP collectible (if you can find a buyer hint hint). Above all, put it into something that makes sense.

Just save your wealth you've accumulated over the years. Because when the downturn comes and everyone's too busy crying, whining, and pointing fingers about how and why life is miserable, thats when you should be able to already buy something else of value. This is no secret. Its a sellers market right now anyways.  You missed out. Too bad. Take a lesson from it. Get over it. Move on. Plenty of other opportunities later on. Gotta think positive and ahead. Otherwise get stuck backwards in nowheresville with the other nobodys. Cold hard truth.

On a side note, debt is a terrible thing. You just end up wasting away what you could have saved. I can not tell you how disappointing it is to hear "I took out a loan for 50K because my bitcoin (or insert X here) was so high and promising!" and taxes (depends on where "you" and "are at") don't help either if you neglected to factor that in during your spending spree if you made a profit. 

As always, pick your poison. Best of luck next time. 

[Bassman59]

Unless the market crashes.

That's true of any stock, regardless of the P/E ratio. There are a handful of other tech stocks right now with absolutely absurd P/E ratios though and I cannot figure out why people push them up to such ridiculous levels.

One word: Delusion

Attention to the microcosms of the market, it's the most illogical thing if you're going big. Yet people are willing to throw themselves like lemmings in pure delusion.

It's called FOMO, the "fear of missing out."

On a side note, debt is a terrible thing. You just end up wasting away what you could have saved. I can not tell you how disappointing it is to hear "I took out a loan for 50K because my bitcoin (or insert X here) was so high and promising!" and taxes (depends on where "you" and "are at") don't help either if you neglected to factor that in during your spending spree if you made a profit. 

There is good debt and bad debt. Bad debt is borrowing $50,000 to put into a risky investment like Bitcoin. Good debt is a mortgage on a home at a low fixed rate. Bad debt is buying a used car on a credit card and not paying it off immediately. Good debt is financing 75% of a new car's cost at 0.9% interest.

[CatalinaWOW]

If you read through this thread you can detect all the elements of making money in stocks.  It is possible, and if done correctly isn't all that risky.  But it does require a few things. 

The first is a lot of work.  You have to understand in detail the prospects of a lot of companies.  The management.  The debt load.  The market.  The competition. The market capitalization.   ......  From this knowledge you have to select the potential winners.  Only rarely will there be a relatively sure thing, just good odds.  But the work doesn't stop here because you have to continually update the work on your selections and keep hunting for additions or replacements. 

The second is a lot of money to start.  Because no one is good enough to win on one pick consistently.  You have to place modest bets on a large number of companies.  You will lose all of your money on some of them.  And lose some on a larger group.  And make modest money on another larger group.  And if you select well and make enough bets you will have a few truly amazing winners.

The third is the dedication and courage to do this over long intervals and to trust your instincts and analysis.  It is hard to watch your $10 stock go to 50 cents and stick with it because the reasons you picked it are still valid.  Or to cut your losses by selling out because something has changed.  Just as it is hard to sell out the huge winner when it becomes likely that it will go no farther.  Few have this kind of long term courage and diligence.  Warren Buffet being one of the best, and one of the few examples.

The bottom line is while it is possible to make money this way, it is as much work as most other honest ways of making money.  And just as everyone does not enjoy fiddling with electronics, not everyone, or even very many, enjoy doing the work required to make money on stocks.

[ejeffrey]

BTW, anyone who thinks Altium is a good buy at the moment at over $20 and a P/E ratio in the 60's is insane. It will get hammered in the next down-turn.

As high as 60 sounds, it's downright reasonable compared to the P/E ratio of companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Some of those were up over 250 last I looked. This could be a catastrophic crash in the making.

Last time you looked must have been a while ago.  Facebook is 28, Google/Alphabet is 30.  You didn't list Apple, but it is at 18.  Amazon is over 250, and partly because of that is the second most heavily shorted stock in the market right now after Tesla.  But the PE doesn't tell the whole story,  They have insanely high revenue (50 B last quarter) and insanely high revenue growth (50% year over year last quarter).  You don't normally judge a company growing that fast on PE ratio.  But then, companies that size normally don't' grow that quickly.  The fairness their valuation depends on to what extent their business is just extremely low margin, and to what extent the low net profit is due to reinvestment in growth, and due to fixable inefficiency in their handling of new business that will get better over time.  I don't know enough to evaluate that, but I for one wouldn't bet against amazon.

[SL4P]

A great topic for all us ‘thinkers’...
THE NEXT BIG THING
Post all your Sure Thing investment suggestions - so we can all get rich quick.
Why should we do all the work, while the investors get thrpevreward...

[julianhigginson]

A great topic for all us ‘thinkers’...
THE NEXT BIG THING
Post all your Sure Thing investment suggestions - so we can all get rich quick.
Why should we do all the work, while the investors get thrpevreward...

That's a funny post, given the quote under your user name...
:-)

[TheNewLab]

I don't about getting rich quick, but start saving those ducats. Another one is coming...market is high, but nothing solid underneath...the vast majority of Americans are still recovering, all trade tariffs do is raise the price of products at home.

Alternatively, look into China's Hang Seng or Japan's Nikkei. Japan and the EU just signed a free-trade agreement. The US is getting left behind as the EU, Asian Pacific rim, even some African nations and South American.

Just do your homework please, and don't invest more than you are willing to lose...

[vk6zgo]

I could have been "Tech Rentals".

Years ago, there was a firm selling secondhand, quite recent model test gear in the UK.
I crunched the numbers, & even with freight to Oz, & perhaps, duty, I could have set up a company renting the gear out.

Everybody asked:- "Who's going to rent test equipment?"
I decided it must be a silly idea, so I didn't do it.

Tech Rentals started up & went from strength to strength.

[@rt]

If I ever wanted to buy stock in a company, it was Microchip, going way back, but it’s not like I had the resource to do it.