The best mistake I ever made

This was my first experience with Wall Street – “a place where a fool and his money are soon parted.” For a long time, I had been an investor in stocks and had been practicing on virtual stock market simulation games but it was my first day trading real stocks online. 

XYZ was a particular share that I had been tracking for a long time, which had ranged between 42 cents to 68 cents in the last 2 years. I noticed that 100,000 shares were available at 33 cents. The bid to buy 100,000 at 33c button was visible on my screen. I immediately clicked the option and my purchase got accepted. I received the notification e-mail on my account confirming the same. I also received an e-mail from my bank, that my account was overdrawn. Knowing that I had my bid covered easily, I went to the manager seeking an explanation. That was the moment I realized, that the bid that I had clicked and which got accepted, was in fact 88 cents and not 33 cents, and in US banks, the payments don’t bounce like here in India, the account gets overdrawn. I re-checked the confirmatory mail and realized that I had misinterpreted the 88 as 33 for some reason that I still don’t understand. I was horrified. I could clearly foresee myself in legal trouble in the near future.

The next couple of days, the value of the share reduced further and I went to the bank manager, explaining to him about my mistake. Even though he realized that it was an accident, there was nothing he could do about it. And on the third day, terrified of the ramifications that were soon to follow, I consulted a lawyer about how to plead guilty at court but prove it to be an accident. The first thing the lawyer did, was check the price of the stock, which had miraculously risen by 80 cents that very day, moving to the price of 1.08$. I immediately sold the stock, making a profit of 20 cents a share so 20,000$ total profit.

The turmoil was over so we could see the humor in the situation. We even mocked Wall Street as “a place for fool’s gold.”But I can never forget the feeling of impending doom that I experienced, and thus far, it has been the best mistake I ever made!