Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Investors Lab
  • Published:

My worst biotech investment

Nature Biotechnology volume 24, page 401 (2006)Cite this article

No one enjoys investing losses, but no investor picks only winners. Even Warren Buffett had his US Airways and Peter Lynch the fraudulent Belgian car exporter ACLN. To deny losers is to pretend you can avoid losing money in the stock market. You can't. Every successful investor's record is an average of winners and losers, and losses often teach more than profits. On this happy note, today I stand first in the confessional line, inviting all schadenfreude.

My worst biotech investment, drug maker QLT (Vancouver, BC, Canada; Nasdaq:QLTI), appeared in this column in October 2004 (Nat. Biotechnol. 22, 1221). Its history illustrates four simple truths. First, every investment is a wager on the chance of potential events, which no matter how certain you are, may not occur. Second, neither you, nor alleged experts, nor professionals have any control over the course of events. Third, because of these two truths, you will have losses. And fourth, as a result, accepting the occasional but inevitable loss ensures a longer, happier and less stressful investing life.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Authors
  1. Tom Jacobs
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

Tom Jacobs is cofounder of Complete Growth Investor, http://www.completegrowth.com, a stock service for individual investors. Tom owned no shares of the companies mentioned in this article at time of writing. He welcomes your comments at tom@completegrowth.com.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jacobs, T. My worst biotech investment. Nat Biotechnol 24, 401 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0406-401

Download citation

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0406-401

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing