Don't Let This Common Investing Mistake Limit Your Returns

When I first started investing (this was back in the 20th century), I had a very simplistic notion of the stock market. I thought profitable companies were good, and unprofitable companies were bad. I wanted to invest in stocks that were making money, and I wanted to avoid stocks that were losing money. All the investing books were talking about the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, so I was very concerned about my P/E ratios.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) was going crazy. I mean, the darn stock was going up every day. And David Gardner and Jeff Fischer were talking about internet commerce and how cool it was, and how Amazon was "top dog and first mover" and it was very, very exciting. But Amazon wasn't making any money. They were unprofitable, and that was bad. So I bought shares of Sealed Air (NYSE: SEE) instead.

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Source Fool.com