"How low can you go" - good saying while playing Limbo, not when investing...

That is the feeling I have towards $CRON, my worst trade ever. We'll get the pain out of the way up front and address the elephant in the room:

So how did we get here? It was the summer of 2020, I was consuming as much investing content as I possibly could. I had developed a few favorite resources I was frequenting, one of which was Investopedia. Don't get me wrong, Investopedia is a great site that provides a lot of value that I still interact with almost daily. However, taking stock advice from them wasn't my best decision.

I remembered reading one Investopedia article about marijuana stocks and $CRON was a name mentioned. I saw the price was low (under $10 per share). I got stuck in the trap of thinking "all it needs to do is go up a little to make a huge gain". On the other side, it only needed to drop a little bit to be a huge loss.

I bought 20 shares across 4 separate lots from 7/6/2020 through 10/5/2020.

This is still only a "paper loss" as I have not sold any shares yet. I am trying to maintain my 3 year minimum holding period. We are quickly approaching 3 years of holding this company and will be looking to sell in my July portfolio rebalancing.

Although this experience has been mostly bad, it has taught me to add companies that pique my interest to my watchlist first and track. Utilizing a watchlist allows me to do the leg work required to initiate a position and make better decisions. This is also one of the bad position decisions that pushed me towards implementing my Birthday Buys and being more calculated in starting new positions.

Dis-honorable mentions were $COIN and $CHWY. Those stories are for another time.

How do you handle enticing new opportunities? What is your minimum holding period? I am interested to see if any others have been caught in a trap like this.