“Of course, not all seminars are created equal. Some are bad ideas, others encourage insanely risky behaviour and, to be fair, some are useful. Most people think investment scams target the elderly and most vulnerable. To counter that idea, I offer the story of Jason Dunn, a 30-something lifelong Calgarian, prolific blogger and generally smart person. To make a very complex story simple, after attending an investing seminar, Dunn borrowed $50,000 against his home and bought a stake in a strip mall, Castleridge Plaza.”
I was contacted a few months ago by a reporter for Avenue Magazine named Tracy Johnson. She found several of my blog posts here about Concrete Equities and Wealthstreet, then contacted me to discuss what happened. We spent quite a while on the phone – the story needed context – as I explained what’s happened over the past few years. I chose to talk about what happened with my investments as a cautionary tale to other investors; this quote pretty much sums it all up from my perspective:
“As someone who routinely spends hours researching which digital camera or laptop to purchase, in retrospect I’m shocked that I didn’t do at least as much research when selecting a company to invest my money in — especially when I was investing 10 to 20 times more money than I’d ever spend on a camera or laptop.”
You can check out the full article here – it’s worth a read.
Very good of you to lend your name to this piece. If at least some good can come from the whole situation, someone else might be prevented the same misfortune. And don't feel too bad about it. I think anyone that has done any type of serious investing has had something go seriously south on them. Hell, I was an investor in Healthsouth.
BTW, did you see the one comment on the story. Almost sounds like your “fan” from a few years back.
Jason,
Investments are a tricky thing; they involve a ton of variables, most of them chaotic in nature (unlike the orderly nature of a specification sheet). It is human nature to tend to shutdown when overwhelmed with data, ambiguity, or both, so don't feel bad. I'm a finance major myself and even I don't want to come close with the many investment “products” out there.
Funny story when I did my equity analysis course: I was doing the calculations for valuation, and realised that some of the inputs could change the valued stock price by as much as 10-20 percentage points; it can mean the difference between profit and loss. When the best methods available to professionals can be less than perfect, it's a no wonder many would rather try for something easier and more digestable!