Our neighborhood investment club decided to have a friendly competition on “best investment” for the next 12 months.

We were each assigned to come up with a publicly available investment and track the returns starting 2/2/26 thru 2/1/27. Whoever delivers the best return (including dividends, Klaus) has neighborhood bragging rights.

I am typically a conservative, index fund investor, so this is a pretty different challenge for me. I wasn’t sure where even to start – maybe at AI stocks, I thought? I had read a bit about Bloom Energy (BE), and thought they might be a target, as their stock was up 50% this year already.

Looking more broadly, I had also seen an article about the recent run-up in precious metals. I recall when I first learned about investing in the early-1980s, there was a big silver & gold boom. The markets quickly fell after that – and struggled for the next 30+ years.

Recently, precious metals were booming again. Silver hit $100 an ounce and Gold was at $5,000.

For my investment prediction, I submitted a fund called ProShares UltraShort Silver (ZSL). It’s an investment that delivers against the INVERSE of the silver market. My bet is that silver will fall over the next year and what is unique about this fund is that it tracks at a 2x multiple of the price of silver.

I was feeling clever about this approach and figured I would either win big or lose big on my prediction. I turned ZSL in as my prediction to our club chairman on Friday morning before the market opened.

That’s when things got weird.

On Friday morning, precious metals started a historic plunge. Gold fell -11.5% on Friday and silver a whopping -32%. It was one of the craziest days in precious metals since the 1980s.

My investment hunch was right, but the problem is that our “bet” doesn’t start until close of market MONDAY (today). I could have already been up an amazing +64% in ZSL if the our game had started on Friday, instead!

Oh well. Easy come, easy go – I guess. I’m hoping silver still has room to fall am … starting tomorrow. If silver drops a bunch more today – before our competition starts at 4 PM, I will be very disheartened by the timing of events for the whole next year.

This just goes to show you why I’m a conservative investor. It can be so difficult to time the market – especially in volatile investments. At a certain point on your journey to financial independence & retiring early, it becomes necessary to realize that protecting your portfolio is more important than growing it with risky plays.

Have you ever had an investment that you just missed explosive returns on?

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