Less than two years ago August 2011 I bought 500 shares of a Finnish network security company
Stonesoft. The total price i paid was €265, including the commission my bank took meaning the share price were somewhere just under €0.50. I did this because a friend of mine started to work for Stonesoft and he told me to trust him, the company "is rock solid, going to the moon" (his words then).
I have not sold those shares, nor have I bought more. In fact, I had pretty much forgotten those shares until this friend of mine from Stonesoft sent a text message yesterday asking how much did I make. As I did not understand the question, I tried to call him but the phone was busy during that 10 to 15 minutes I tried. I decided to call him later this week to ask about his curious message.
Late yesterday evening I finally read the news,
McAfee will buy Stonesoft. McAfee's offer is €4.50 per share, which in my case means €2,250.
Today I am really angry to myself. All signs were there, close friends working in company telling it is a safe investment (no secrets revealed, only happy employees expressing their positive feelings about the employer), a company with remarkable reputation and no limits in future expansion plans. The share price stayed quite a long time under one Euro, each share is now worth €4.50. In my case the price McAfee will pay is about 9 times what I payed only 21 months ago when I bought the shares. But I was too careful, too pessimist.
Lesson learned. People say if it sounds too good it most probably is not very good. Sometimes these old sayings are wrong.
