It's been a while since my last post. After a month long trip to Korea, I've had lot's of time to reflect and think about what's happened to me this year. It's been a terrible year and I put myself in the position to get hurt the way I did. I still believe that in life you need to be bold and take risks but I crossed the line from being bold to reckless. How can you tell if you're crossing that line? You will know if you answer yes to this question: If things don't go my way will I regret it? Obviously you're not going to happy if you take a risk and you lose but that's not what I mean by regret. What I'm talking about is regret rooted in the notion that the action you took was fundamentally or morally wrong. Despite the fact that I was so confident in Greenstar and got to purchase the bulk of my shares at a discounted price to what the market price was at the time, it was reckless for me to have risked as much as I did. It warranted a sizable bet but I broke the number one golden rule I had for myself which is never put yourself in a situation where you get wiped out or crippled if you're wrong. I believed I had good reasons to make an exception to this rule but I was wrong in the worst possible way. There are no exceptions to this rule because there's no way you can be certain of anything in this game. Whether it was bad luck, bad judgement or both you simply can't expose yourself the way I did.
I've been beating myself up a lot going over the thought process I had during ever step of this fiasco but I over it now and come to terms with it. The bottom line is that what I did was what a naive, overconfident amateur would do. Given my experience I should have known a lot better and I'm so ashamed of myself but there's really 2 ways to handle something like this. You either let it destroy you or you learn from it and do whatever it takes to recover. I've chosen the latter. I've had many setbacks in life but I was never the type who stays down for long wallowing in self pity. I've always bounced back becoming stronger in the process. I went through some very dark times in recent months. Many days I felt dead on the inside and I didn't even want to get out of bed. But I'm doing what needs to be done to recover. I've taken comfort in my family, namely my daughter. She motivated me to get back on my feet because I don't want to end up being a loser deadbeat dad and have a negative impact on her life. That would be something I could not live with. I'm taking steps to recover. I've found a "real job" which I know I can do well and could lead to growth and I continue to look for investment opportunities with the capital I still have.
As far as Greenstar goes, there is currently a class action against the directors and auditors led by Siskinds. They had success against another Chinese company named Zungui which basically allowed investors to recover 30% of their investment cost but the whole process took 3 years to play out. I'm not holding my breathe on this but these guys appear to have a good track record.
I recently watched a documentary about the World Wars on the history channel. In it they document the struggles and triumphs of the allied leaders. Winston Churchill is regarded as a hero of WW2 but few people know that in WW1 he spearheaded the invasion of Gallipoli which ended up being a disastrous defeat costing many lives. His political career was effectively over at the time and he was forced to resign. What did he do? He picked up a gun and fought in the War. In time he regained his former post and eventually became Prime Minster of the UK leading the allies to victory in WW2. I like Churchill, feel I have to return to the front lines in order to build myself back to where I was. If I fail, then I fail but I will never surrender.
