My best bowls: JDS Uniphase (JDSU)

In these times of confinement and stock market manic-depressive delirium, it is better to temporarily stay away from stocks. Instead of traditional analyses, I am therefore inaugurating today a mini series on my best stock market gambles, just to lighten the mood a little. While some like to spread their big hits on social media, my contrarian nature invites me to do just the opposite. We learn little from our best investments, except that the method followed is correct, that the market was favorable or that we got screwed. Or all of these at the same time. On the contrary, the examples that I am going to present to you in this series have taught me much more than anything I have read and heard about investing.

So let's start with one of the very first stocks I bought. We go back to the year 2000. My God, it seems like yesterday and yet so much water has flowed under the bridge since then. In short, it had been three years since I entered "working" life and I was already fed up. From time to time I would come across CNBC while zapping and I would see stocks that were exploding upwards, day after day. Among them, JDS Uniphase was one of the most followed by investors in technology stocks. It was breaking record after record. The price had multiplied by ten, just in the previous year (1999). It was a bit like Tesla today.

In my little head, it was bubbling. I began to imagine what it would be like if I invested my first savings in this stock. My little calculations were going well: if JDSU continued like this, I could stop working in just a few years. I could be a rentier while still in my early thirties. There was also no reason for that to change, because all the greatest specialists who paraded on CNBC said: "this time it's different."

So I took the plunge. I opened an account with "Direct Net" (Crédit Suisse), transferred the balance from my savings account and bought JDSU. That was in August 2000. Here is the rest in one image:

In the bad timing genre, it was pretty strong. I don't remember exactly when I closed my position. I just know that it was way too late. I especially know that I spent countless bad evenings watching the price plummet on CNBC or Yahoo Finance. Yes, it already existed. I also remember the theories of the pseudo gurus of dotcom finance who still managed to convince me that it would go back up.

Why I bought it

Frankly, apart from the lure of gain, and wanting to do like everyone else, I have no idea today. To tell the truth, I didn't even know what JDS Uniphase did. Nor did they, for that matter. Nobody knew.

My mistakes

• Buying a stock just because it was in the spotlight, without considering its fundamentals
• Not cutting my losses much sooner
• Trusting CNBC Gurus
• Investing in a bubble situation

What I learned in the moment

Thanks to JDSU I became very wary of trendy investments and tech stocks. I moved towards more traditional stocks and more experienced companies. I no longer gave any credence to the pseudo specialists who make headlines in the media. Above all, I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

What I didn't learn at the time

The fundamentals of business remained a very vague concept to me at the time. I also did not understand why losses had to be cut more quickly.