Have been told the big named places close to me are about 75 a month and you need to sign up for a year.

Regarding the Jack Kerouac bit: it’s a lot harder to shake off when it’s tied to a cause.

Regarding the overtrading: it usually doesn’t make money, but it can give an education. The best things you can get out of a sustained spurt of overtrading, I found, are:

a) The ability to fight one’s excitement and one’s panic when a stock’s shooting up and/or plummeting. This habit, if acquired and kept, helps a lot in buying good issues that go “on sale.”
b) The experience of lobbing off a holding for a quick profit, only to see it go much higher. I’ve experienced it at least twice. If self-castigation and self-pity are avoided, it encourages the cultivation of patience.
c) There’s no better way to learn that you usually think you’re a better punter than you are. This kind of disillusionment is good for the long run.
d) Finding out your trading patterns and mistakes. Perhaps sadly, the only way to find it out is through making a lot of trades. Making a lot of trades quickly assembles a database that’s still fresh in mind.
e) Treading the path of some great value investors, who themselves have dabbled in short-term trading. Doing so makes the “don’ts” you read from them more meaningful. They resonate.

The only reason to blog is because you enjoy owning a blog, as you say – not to let it rule your thinking. Blogging to make money is undoubtedly a mug’s game for nearly everyone. In case you never read my thoughts:
http://monevator.com/2008/11/18/blogging-for-money/

Thanks for the comments!

Fortunately I had several succesful websites which covered all the hosting costs etc, but the amount of time that I have spent on my blog must run into hundreds of hours. I dread to think what else I could have achieved in that time!

I’m currently taking some time out to make sure I enjoy the summer (even if it is raining all the time) and that has made me realise that you have to run a blog, not let it run you. I had got to the stage where I felt I had to write something every couple of days, and putting that pressure on myself led to me writing posts for the sake of it, rather than writing about topics I enjoyed.

I guess this is similar to over-trading shares, often people believe their shares can continue to rise but feel they should buy/sell all the time so carry on trading. Not only is this costly in a financial sense, but as you mention it takes up a lot of your time.

The lesson learnt…. money is valuable, but isn’t quite the scarce resource we sometimes think it is. Time however is more limited in supply and thus far more valuable than money.

God bless hindisght

Africa was very hyped in the last two years as everywhere else looked crazily expensive. I can see how it happened.

Wine is interesting. I’ve no facilities to lay it down, but I’ve thought about investing in some in a warehouse for pure diversification. You seem to need to know your stuff though (e.g. buying the right age between young and close to moving towards undrinkable, etc).

Potentially a little toppy though?

* Too little diversification in my early share buying days *
One of my investments early on was in a unit trust ‘Framlington Health’. This must’ve accounted for about 30% of my portfolio. I bought in about 2000 and it bombed from there, I think I lost half my money.

Then, just last year, I invested in the New Star Heart of Africa fund. Lost 60% on that one, but it was more like 10% of my portfolio.

That was the only major mistake I made during the 2008 market collapse though; overall I only lost around 10% of my holdings, thanks mainly to having a good deal in cash.

I learnt lessons about diversification within assets but also of asset classes.

* Buying expensive investments and thinking I can beat the market *
I don’t mean buying at the top of the market; I mean paying too much in charges for funds with wizzo words like ‘alpha’ in them. I had great successes with some funds (Fidelity Special Situations) and others have just bombed, no matter how many ‘A’s S&P can put on them.

* Buying too much wine *
I think men often develop nerdy collector obsessions, and mine’s with wine. It could’ve been mousemats or beer coasters or whatever, but I chose one of the most expensive hobbies going. I started small, began finding great value at the £10 and then £15/bottle price ranges, but it just grew from there and at one stage I was routinely spending ~£50 per bottle, picking up a bottle or week or so. All this, of course, not even for drinking, all for ‘lying down’.

The one upside is that it can be quite easy to sell even single bottle quantities of quality wine, if you know the places to go (online forums are a good bet).

My mistakes seem to mirror the original author’s in some ways: early investment mistakes and spending too much on hobbies.