ornoth

The date: August 2008. Ornoth pulls the trigger on a $10,000 stock deal, adding 100 shares of copper and gold miner Freeport McMoRan (FCX) to his qualified retirement fund.

Well done!

Three months later, the stock has plummeted 83 percent: from $92 a share to just $15. My $10,000 investment is only worth $1,500, having lost $9,000 of value in the banking collapse of 2008.

Timing… I has it!

Since then, the stock has slowly recovered in sporadic fits and starts. But today I was able to sell those 100 shares of FCX off at $92: a wash sale. It took 22 months—two years—for the stock to finally regain the value it lost in those first 3 months. Or you could look at it this way: in the two years since that 2008 low, the stock has appreciated 586 percent, and I just locked in that “gain”.

Wow. That was one scary ride. Jane, stop this crazy thing!