Hi Guys just dipping my toes here joined strawman recently and signed up for premium after listening to Andrew on Motley fool podcasts .which I'm also a member
My first introduction and iinvestment was an MLC fund which was through a financial adviser.But what made that an interesting lesson was it was the very day before the twin towers incident.
( anything can happen and don't panic )
My longest holding is currently IVV which I picked up for $150 a share in 2012/13 .it's now just off $600 and continues to be a great stress free holding which I've added too over the years .
While the title of this forum thread poses the question, Which current investment have you held the longest? ...Based on some of the answers below, perhaps we should be asking two questions:
1. What was your first ever investment?
2. Which of your current investments have you held for the longest time?
For both questions, it would be helpful to include the company name, ticker code, price paid (if you remember), and date bought (or at least the year).
I've already answered the second question (which is the same as the forum title) - and my answer (Wesfarmers - WES) is down below somewhere - and my answer to the first question is that I was given shares in a WA company called Rural Traders Cooperative (WA) Ltd (RTC) by my maternal grandmother's second husband (so my step-grandfather, who had been a succesful farmer) when I was in my early twenties (so in the late eighties, probably around 1987 or 1988) and I then bought some more RTC shares with my own money. They are no longer around - I actually don't know what happened to them. Further Reading: https://www.afr.com/companies/brokers-like-what-they-see-in-rtc-19930129-kaqan (AFR, 29-Jan-1993). It appears they did well in the early 90s. I'm not even sure what exchange they were listed on at the time, I don't think it was the ASX. However that sparked my interest in shares, the ability to pay some money to own a small part of a large company and then have the right to share in that company's success in the future. Or it's ultimate failure in this case it seems.
My next investments were in dividend payers like the big banks and occasionally Telstra in the following years, and then I got interested in companies that were growing much faster, like Jubilee Mines, founded by and run by Kerry Harmanis, which was bought out (for $3.1 billion) by Xstrata in 2007 at the height of that nickel boom - Xstrata is now part of Glencore, and Glencore sold that Cosmos nickel mine complex on to Western Areas (WSA) for just $24.5 million in 2015. Jubilee Mines was a 6-bagger for me, and also for my Father-in-law, who I had talked into buying some - because they paid good fully franked dividends at the time - about as good as the banks but Jubilee also had a rapidly rising share price as well. Not as profitable for Xstrata or Glencore, however Western Areas (WSA) have done well with the asset. What that taught me was that managers/owners who sell mining assets when commodity prices are absolutely flying (very high) are usually very smart, and the ones who buy those assets at the top of the market are usually not too smart. Anyway, that's enough for tonight I reckon.
Starpharma. I bought my first tranche in the late nineties and added most years until last year. I sold the vast majority in 2019 but have held a small portion to remain engaged.
it is an amazing scientific story. I have some old straws on the company which explain my thesis.
sadly, I lost confidence on managements capacity to execute but would be ready to re-enter in a meaningful fashion should the DEP platform gain traction.
Longest for me is AMP.
I was given these shares in 1998 when AMP listed on the stock exchange as I had an AMP life insurance policy at the time.
What complete lemons! Smashed at the Royal Commission into misconduct in the banking and financial services industry more than $1 billion in market value was stripped from the share value and there has been high churn of management who have all been hopeless.
We are probably more likely to see aliens before we see a turnaround in AMP.