The Three “Deadly” Financial Mistakes

Readers Share Their Blunders… And Porter Responds

This is Porter’s Daily Journal, a free e-letter from Porter & Co. that provides unfiltered insights on markets, the economy, and life to help readers become better investors. It includes weekday editions and two weekend editions… and is free to all subscribers.

Table of Contents

• Readers Share Their Blunders… And Porter Responds

• Three Things To Know Before We Go…

• And one more thing… Reader Poll

• Coming Up This Week…

• In Case You Missed It…

• “Un-Surgery” and a $59 billion medical revolution

  • Presented by George Gilder

I spent my entire weekend replying to subscriber emails.

I’d wager that when I asked you to send me your stories about your biggest (financial) mistakes, you didn’t think I’d read all of them.

But I did!

In fact, I didn’t leave my house all weekend, except to go out to dinner on Saturday. I answered emails for more than 20 hours this weekend. 

If you sent me an email, look for my reply – because I answered virtually everyone who wrote to me. (If you didn’t write yet, please take the time to do so. I read every email: [email protected])

The replies to my query came in three basic categories:

First, there were a lot of folks who said their biggest mistake was, more or less, me!

Some people took my sincere question about their biggest financial mistake and took the opportunity to mock me and/or to complain, loudly, about a stock they bought on our recommendation that has done poorly.

Also in this category were subscribers who complained that they’ve bought too many subscription research products, and/or that the research products they’ve bought from other publishers are not very good.

I’d put all these comments in a bucket labeled broadly as

#1: My biggest mistake was following bad advice or paying too much for bad advice.