I was chatting with a contact at a national newspaper about a piece they’re working on talking to individual investors and their reasons for starting investing.
He’s keen to speak with someone who started investing either during the Dot Com boom in the early 2000s or in or around the financial crisis.
Drop me a quick DM here if you might be open to this. They’ll probably want to use your name but beyond that the details will likely more relate to how you started trading than anything in depth about your personal finances today.
I made some cheeky spreadbets during the financial crisis on IG, can’t remember if it was the DOW or FTSE and lost 2 grand in a few minutes, round about . This was me in my early 20s, single and 10% of my income was going on rent. It was roughly when the banks were sat round the Fed table and told they were being bailed out. About the same time I decided to be more careful with money
I started around the dotcom boom, but then there was a big hiatus afterwards. Bought into the likes of last minute.com and iii at IPO when you had to clip a coupon out of the Sunday paper and post it off with a cheque. Lost my shirt on the likes of Marconi, Telewest and Tanfield Group before pretty much taking a 20 year break
I was playing around with AIM stocks, didn’t know better. Bioprogress and Magna Mining, both went the way of the donkey.
Think when I put my spreadbet on I briefly lost £20k. Cannot remember if I had a stop loss in place, but after seeing large red numbers and my heart rate going into triple figures, I bailed.
Sticking mostly with large caps nowadays, via ISA!
dotcom must have been grim. I work in the search engine space and when Google floated, it still seemed overpriced. Even the PE of tech stocks over in the US is insane, yet that’s what’s making money.
