Well, after months of watching CBA being vaporized from $62 to the $38 to $46 range, I forced my Dad to dump his CFDs and he did right before they plummeted to $31.
My dad held the CBA CFDs, he ultra-leveraged too much and paid the price, he also made shitloads in WOW when the market had rallied, but that's all gone into defecit now.
The family took a big loss, but hey it feels great! We still have enough of a cash cushion, it hurts to have to sell off some properties, it taught us a big burning lesson.
I've learnt that in my opinion, wealth creation doesn't come from using CFDs or big margin loans. Sure if you're successful, its great, but the cost was you probably sat there for ages on your computer and trolled Dow futures night and day and became obsessed with the stock market in an unhealthy way.
So not to preach about what's right or what's wrong, it's just my opinion: The best way to invest is clasically (as I have done, in contrast to my dad) - a diversified portfolio of high quality stocks (some risky small caps go well too, and some ETFs), built through no margin loans.
Atleast I can sleep at night now, I haven't even checked all of my shares on Friday but atleast I know that despite Westpac shares dropping like a rock post-merger, the company, along with Woolies, Woodside, Rio, Beach, AWE, SP Ausnet etc are not all going down the drain (OZ Minerals might be).
It feels great! I encourage investors to trade stockmarket obesession/watching dow futures all night and trying to make fast money for their health and long-term prosperity.
