Missed Opportunity

When I opened my mutual fund account with Ameriprise Financial, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I got an account manager to go with it.

To protect this account manager's identity, as well as to be able to speak ill of her in her presence without her actually knowing that I'm mocking about her, I decided to nick name her "Tommy Hagens".

That's right, Tom Hagens. After the famous Godfather consigliere played by legendary actor Robert Duvall.

Being Italian, I thought it only appropriate to have my own financial consigliere to help me amass the millions of dollars I was going to acquire by dominating the stock market.

My grandmother made a ton of money in the stock market as a young lass. She was unbelievably smart, knew what to buy, when to buy, why to buy. She purchased Xerox when in an initial stock offering. My grandmother was a woman ahead of her time.

Armed with that knowledge, I only assumed that her ability to pick a stock would be genetic and passed down to her grandson. My grandmother told me to "Buy what you know", a great piece of advice for investing. Purchase products that you love and constantly use.

When "Tommy Hagens" came over to chat with me about my pending portfolio, things couldn't have gone any worse. I came prepared with a list of stocks that I wanted to invest in.

As a person who is tech savy as a result of what I do for a living, I have a really great opportunity to try different products and I know what works and what doesn't. I use Canon, Sony, and Panasonic cameras to shoot weddings. I use Apple products to edit all my films and projects. On my way to and from jobs, I listen to Sirius XM radio. These are all companies that I strongly support, know, understand, and most importantly, "love".

I told my "Tommy Hagens" that I wanted to invest in Sirius (prior to the merger that created Sirius XM). The stock was trading for something like twenty five cents a share. I presented her my case as to why I thought the stock was formidable and had a good future. Sirius was striking deals with car companies (an innovative idea to acquire new subscribers). Sirius has a continuous cash flow opportunity derived from it's subscription based service ($14 a month, for over 1 million users is a lot of cash). Sirius had just signed on one of the greatest radio entertainers of all time, Howard Stern.

That's where my pitch went horribly wrong. My "Tommy Hagens" hated Howard Stern. She described his radio program as pure filth and a waste of time. She chastised me for listening to such a degrading radio program; I was a college educated student, I should be listening to NPR... She refused to even entertain the notion of helping me invest in Sirius stock.

Let me break down exactly how much money my "Tommy Hagens" cost me because she had a personal bias against Howard Stern.

My initial meeting with "Tommy Hagens" was in November of 2008. Sirius stock was trading roughly around $0.25 - $0.30 per share at the time. I had $5000 I wanted to invest in the stock. Let's say, for arguments sake, I purchased the stock at $0.25 a share.

$5,000 x $0.25 per share (trading fee waived because I'm so darned handsome) equalling 20,000 shares purchased in November of 2008.

So, if I still had that stock, and sold it today (April 10, at it's current price -$3.12)...question for the class... How much money would the stock be worth today?

$62,400.

Unless my math is off.

Which is quite probable. It took me 30 minutes to figure out this equation using the phrase "If an apple costs twenty five cents and I have five thousand apples, how many apples could I purchase?"

I've told this story a hundred times since the night it happened. I won't even go into detail about how she also shot down my suggestion to invest in Apple stock. My blood pressure just can't handle another one of those calculations.

I've told this story to my wife's uncle, who is in the same line of work as my "Tommy Hagens". He always shakes his head in disbelief and disappointment whenever he hears me retell this story. He constantly reminds me that it's the account managers job to work for the client, not the other way around. He pointed out that the funds I wound up investing in (at "Tommy Hagens" insistence) were funds that had higher management fees and were currently losing me money.

The funds haven't made anything since I first purchased them. Overall, they bounce back and forth between losing and gaining roughly $1,000.

I learned a really good lesson with investing with "Tommy Hagens", one that my uncle-in-law constantly reminds me whenever I see him. "It's your money, you invest it how you want. You'll have nobody to blame but yourself if the stock gains or falls. We're only advisors, not the end all, know it all experts that "Tommy Hagens" painted herself to be.