An Investing Lesson I Wish I Knew Four Years Ago

How to avoid this treacherous investment pitfall

Code & Coins
11 min readMay 29, 2024
Photo by PiggyBank on Unsplash

I recently saw a post on Instagram from an account I follow. The post shared an old adage regarding purchasing the same cow twice and determining your profit.

Funny thing is, this account has nothing to do with finance or investing. It’s theme: meat. The profile is literally called meatdad1.

Doesn’t exactly evoke financial advice…or does it? I digress.

Despite being more meaty than money, this post was very eye opening for me as it showed me that I, like a lot of others apparently, are quick to complicate things.

It also showed me something I wish I knew when I first started investing four years ago years ago.

Let’s check out the meat and potatoes of the scenario.

The Scenario

Below is the content of the post.

I bought a cow for $800

I sold it for $1000

I bought the same cow again for $1100

Then sold it again for $1300

The post’s caption asked what seemed to be a simple question: How much did I earn?

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Code & Coins
Code & Coins

Written by Code & Coins

Blogging about software 👨🏻‍💻 and money 💰 https://linktr.ee/mattcroak

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