Ann: Chairman's Address to Shareholders , page-30

Paul301301,

Looking on the bright side at least you're only 33. It would potentially be far worse if you were in your 50s or 60s either heading towards retirement in the near-term or already in retirement.

You're still young and hopefully you have a long life ahead of you. There is plenty of time to recover.

I'd just like to make a few comments on your situation as you recounted it.

The first is putting too much stock on what any one individual or any group of individuals say to you. Unless someone is holding a gun to your head then the final choice to invest money in a company on the ASX is your choice and your choice alone.

I got massively burnt some time ago investing in something that is no longer around through the advice of an accountant/financial adviser. I took their words and advice as gospel, as after all they are the professionals not me, without doing any background checks and research myself. I learned a harsh lesson, but at least I learned it before it was too late. In learning that lesson at a relatively young age I am now much better off for the experience going forward.

I basically put the house on something and to say it went pear-shaped doesn't tell the half of it.

You should never put all your eggs in one basket and you should never part with all of your savings either.

Having said that, AEB is not in administration, from my perspective at least not all hope has been lost, and any losses that current investors are facing are only paper losses unless they crystallise those losses by selling out of their positions.

AEB is a long-term investment for me and it has only been listed for three years come January next year. Of course there is no guarantee that the company will become a success, but success was never going to happen overnight. These things take a lot longer to eventuate than most people realise. I guess the trap people fall into is expecting a company to be fully mature at the time of its listing on any given exchange, the ASX in our case when in fact when a company lists on the ASX it is more often than not in its infancy a long way away from ever becoming commercial. AEB has proven no different and I was never under the illusion that commercialisation for AEB was anything other than years away in the long-term future.

Out of the 36 stocks I hold in my portfolio the biggest paper losses are with AEB at current prices. The reason I can sleep at night and look forward positively to the future is the presence of 35 other stocks in the portfolio. I have been rubbished on other threads for holding 'so many stocks', but diversification is key to sound investment as far as I am concerned and as I said previously I learned that the hard way.

If there is anything I could say to you and everyone else reading this relating to investing on the Stock Market it is to never put everything you've got into a single company. Diversify across companies and sectors to reduce the fallout if anything goes under or doesn't work out the way you expect it to.

Putting everything you've got on a single stock is the highest risk-highest reward play you could ever make and sadly it rarely turns out for the best.

I wish you all the best in the future and hope everything works out for you.