Market Stories

[Clemdane]

Mine is a 'best of times/worst of times' story many years ago during the dot com boom. I bought 800 shares of ZICA in July 99 at just over a dollar (can't find the older records in my Etrade archive so don't know the exact price.) There was a lot of buzz about it at the time because China web/telecom stocks were on fire. It took off and ran for many months. I then sold it at $26 at the end of January 2000. It went to $39 after that but I was still happy.

Unfortunately, the reason I sold it and most of my other stocks in January 2000 was so that I could raise funds to invest in pre-IPO shares of the dotcom start-up I was working for. I liquidated all but one of my stocks for a total of $117,000 and invested it in my company, which I believed in 1000%. We went bankrupt 7 months later and needless to say there was no IPO. In order to take the loss on my taxes I had to get the CEO to write me a check for $5 for the total value of my shares.