Lessons for a Wiser Future: Embracing Missed Investment Opportunities 😎
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Today we'd like to share some tales of massive squandered chances today. Every investor will experience these, but the show must go on! Let’s first thank Morad Stern for the inspiration.
Check out our previous articles:
Wealth Management Enters the Digital Era
How to Balance Liquid and Non-Liquid Assets
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Accept Missed Investment Opportunities: Resilience in Tomorrow✨
In the realm of investing💰, it's typical to come across missed opportunities that make us wonder what might have been.
This article will look at the types of missed investment opportunities and ways to move past the regret they cause. We will learn how to use life's lessons as catalysts for a more affluent financial future by learning how to harness their power together.
So let’s start with some painful stories!
Do you know Disney's What If series about the Marvel Universe's heroes? The show focuses on particular moments in time when famous characters chose different paths and the course of history as we know it completely changed.
Example 1: Yahoo! totally missed it
1. Yahoo! was valued at a record $125 billion. Verizon eventually purchased it for $4.8 billion.
2. In 1998, Yahoo! declines to pay $1,000,000 to acquire Google. The current value of Google is $1.59 trillion. It only gets better from here...
3. In 2002, Google agrees to be purchased by Yahoo! for $5 billion. Yahoo!, however, would only spend $3 billion.
4. Yahoo! made a $1 billion bid for Facebook four years later, but Zuckerberg rejected the deal. Some claimed that the board would push for a sale if Yahoo! slightly raised its offer. Yahoo! nonetheless wasn't prepared to move.
5. Microsoft made a $46 billion takeover bid for Yahoo! two years later, in 2008. yahoo declined.
6. Yahoo paid $1.1 billion in 2013 to acquire the blogging service Tumblr. The platform's value fell to $230 million three years later. Amazingly, Netflix (!) was the second candidate Yahoo! contemplated purchasing for $4 billion (instead of Tumblr). Netflix is currently valued at $160 billion.
Example 2: The Beatles’ guitar 🎸
Decca was formerly one of the most famous labels in the music business. A bunch of young musicians from Liverpool auditioned on January 1st, 1962, but Decca wasn't impressed. They believed that guitar bands had passed their prime and that this band of scruffy misfits had no intention of changing that anytime soon. They were also unable of spelling the word "beetle." That group was the Beatles, who went on to dominate the industry of music. Decca's failure was good news for the much smaller record company EMI, which gave the future Fab Four a chance while they sat back and watched the cash flow in.
Example 3: Atari and Apple 🤓
Steve Jobs' first employer at Atari, where he created video games, was Nolan Bushnell. Naturally, when Jobs started his new company Apple Computers, he went to him for funding. In the 1970s, Jobs offered Bushnell a third of the business for $50,000, which is equivalent to $242,000 in today's currency. Bushnell rejected him and lost the opportunity to become one of the world's super-rich. Despite this, he does not regret his choice, as he stated to ABC in 2015:
"I’ve got a wonderful family, I’ve got a great wife, my life is wonderful. I’m not sure that if I had have been uber, uber, uber rich that I’d have had all of that.”
Example 4: Blockbuster and Netflix 🌟🔫
You don't run into the thing that destroys your company very often, and even less so when it comes with a gun. When Netflix, a struggling online mail order business in need of money, entered the home entertainment market in 2000, Blockbuster still controlled the market for home video rentals. Its CEO proposed to sell for $50 million, which is equal to $75.6 million in today's dollars, but was thrown out of Blockbuster's building. We are all aware of what followed. People stopped renting DVDs after Netflix started streaming. Blockbuster collapsed because it took too long to react. While Blockbuster Video is all but extinct, Netflix is currently valued around $200 billion.
Example 5: Google’s Garage 🚗
The tech investor Bessemer Venture Partners released what it referred to as their "anti-portfolio" a few years ago. This is a list of businesses it was eligible to invest in but chose not to. It was a fun peek into the VC world.
The best tale is about how partner David Cowan lost the opportunity to seed Google. Sergey Brin and Larry Page had rented out Susan Wojcicki's garage as Google's initial workplace from Cowan's college mate. She tried to get Cowan to meet with them. Cowan diligently avoided the garage and the two founders who were working there. “How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?” he said…
Not enough? Take a look at this one…
One of the dotcom boom's biggest stars in 1999 was Excite. Sadly, everything was about to collapse, but if it had purchased a scruffy start-up named Google, managed by a couple of Stanford students, it could have been spared that fate. Sadly, CEO George Bell declined the offer even after the price was lowered to $750,000 because he considered it too expensive. Excite, on the other hand, failed to take the globe by storm like Google did. The company declared bankruptcy in 2001.'
So, how can we turn missed opportunities into stepping stones to success? 🏆
Numerous factors, including market swings and our current level of knowledge, can have an impact on our investment decisions. It's critical to understand that lost opportunities are a necessary component of the investment process. We can choose to accept these events as priceless lessons that inform our future endeavors rather than dwelling on regrets.
Don’t try to “time the market”!! 📈
This graph demonstrates why investors should never attempt to time the stock market:
Timing the market is a dangerous enterprise since it requires correctly predicting asset price highs and lows, which is practically impossible even for seasoned specialists.Learn from mistakes!
We might look at missed opportunities as stepping stones toward growth rather than being devoured by regret. Regardless of the result, every choice teaches us something that helps us improve our financial methods. We can improve our decision-making in the future by learning more about our decision-making processes through reflection on the past.
We must first change our way of thinking in order to overcome the adventures of missing opportunities. Instead of concentrating on the past, we should concentrate on the lessons learned and the progress made. Each missed opportunity has significant lessons that can be used to better our investment strategy and decision-making abilities.
Resilience becomes our most valuable asset as we navigate the volatile investment world. By accepting that setbacks are an inevitable part of the path, we may strengthen our resolve to bounce back stronger and wiser.
Adapting to change, learning from mistakes, and retaining a forward-thinking outlook are critical success factors.
Furthermore, pursuing knowledge and constant self-improvement are crucial. Educating ourselves about the complexities of the market (Finberry Fields 😉 for instance, just saying…), maintaining current trends, and getting advice from knowledgeable professionals can provide us with the tools we need to make informed decisions. With information, we can reduce the number of missed opportunities and increase our chances of success.
Finally, the actual measure of success 🚀 is not avoiding missed opportunities entirely, but rather how we respond to them. We transform missed opportunities into essential building bricks for our journey to financial success through our perseverance, adaptability, and relentless resolve. So, equipped with the lessons learned, let us go ahead, turning every setback into a stepping stone that brings us closer to our goals.
David
Disclaimer: This article's content is offered solely for educational reasons; it is not intended to be financial advice. Before making any investment decisions, always conduct your own research or speak with a knowledgeable professional. Invest wisely!