My $2.8 Million Netflix Mistake
I am the luckiest -- and unluckiest -- Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) investor you will probably ever meet. I was lucky enough to nearly nail the bottom of one of the greatest growth stocks on this side of the millennium when I made a modest investment of roughly $2,600 for 500 shares in the then broken IPO in late 2002. I was unlucky enough to sell the lion's share of my stake just a few months later.
The math is worse than you probably think. Those 500 shares after a pair of stock splits would be 7,000 shares today. I sold all but 20% of that position a few months later, and five years ago I wrote about my $505,845 mistake -- what the 80% I sold would be worth today. Netflix stock continued to appreciate. The position I sold too soon would be worth $802,179 in late 2016 and $884,709 by March 2017. The price tag on those shares is now up to nearly $2.8 million as of Friday's close.
Image source: Getty Images.
Source Fool.com
