You know all those generic personal finance advice about how you should just invest in index funds and not bother with individual stocks?

Yeah well, I guess they were onto something.  Here’s a snapshot from the current stock holdings in my TradeKing account:

TradeKing Unrealized Losses

Hey sweet. The holdings are only down 69.29%.  I believe a month ago it was down 78%, in which case the title for this post would have been “19,711 Reasons Not to Buy Individual Stocks.”

These are of course unrealized losses.  I don’t expect to sell any of these three holdings anytime soon, nor do I expect them to recover within any short time frame.

I’m fairly confident about two of the company above.  One’s a telecommunication company paying out a steady dividend (knock on wood)… and the other is in the semiconductor industry and has enough cash to weather the storm (hell, with current prices, it has 41% of its market capitalization in cash).

There’s only one holding that I’m iffy about and that company is in the buildings material industry.  That description alone should be self explanatory. Heh.  The company did however receive additional funding from one of its major institutional investor, but whether or not those fundings can get the company through hard times is another story.

Despite the fact that I’m still fairly young and will most likely be able to ride all of this out, there were a few moments a month ago when I realized I was reaching my risk tolerance levels. Let me tell you something, that was a very fun experience (if you consider feeling scared and anxious fun, then yeah it was super fun).

So yeah. Don’t buy individual stocks unless you can do the proper homework and tolerate the risk involved.  I would plainly suggest against investing in individual stocks on the whole, but you know… hard to give that suggestion when I don’t follow it myself.  Hah!

P.S. These individual stock holdings are of course not the majority of my investment, or else I’ll be freaking out and crying (a lot more anyway).  Most of my other long term investments are in my retirement accounts, and they’re happily down only about 30-40%. Haha. Good times.