Photo: AFP / Spencer Platt / Getty Images
If you've ever wished you put a few dollars into Bitcoin when it was changing hands for pocket change or snapped up Apple shares when they were selling for cents, you're not alone.
Even investment experts have ones that got away.
Here are some of the investments we regret missing out on.
Amazon
Hamilton Hindin Greene investment advisor Jeremy Sullivan said someone who had invested $10,000 in Amazon's IPO in 2007 would have just under $30 million now.
They would have had to stick with it through some volatility along the way though, including through the 'Dot Com' crash, when its share price fell by more than 90 percent.
Devon Funds Management retail head Greg Smith agreed Amazon could be a missed opportunity - it traded for US7c in May 1997, but shares are now more than US$220.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin has been the outperformer of the investment world recently.
Chartered accountant and chief executive of Swyftx digital investment platform Jason Titman said, if someone had invested $36,500 in Bitcoin over the past decade - equivalent to $10 a day - they would now hold a portfolio worth about $2.8 million.
Smith said he was in London in 2013, when Bitcoin was $1000.
"A crypto fanatic told me to buy it, I hadn't even heard of it and didn't."
A2
Smith said he also regretted not buying A2 Milk shares, when they were 2c in 2004.
The share price hit more than $20 in 2020 and is about $8.60 now.
Apple
Smith said he also regretted missing out on Apple in the 1980s, when it regularly changed hands for less than US30c and is now more than US$210.
Nvidia
Smith said Nvidia was up 66000 percent since its IPO in 1999 and up 1500 percent since 2020.
In July, it became the world's first US$4 trillion company. The surge was driven by demand for its chips, which are used in AI.
"There have been lofty expectations, but they've been delivering on that," Smith said in June. "They've ridden the generative AI boom and it's getting real demand."
Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said not buying into Facebook in the early days was one of his regrets.
You could buy shares for about US$20 in 2012 and they are worth more than US$770 now.
"In hindsight, there's heaps I wish I bought," Olsen said. "Probably buying a property when I was a baby, that would have been my best investment, but there's also enough that I remember thinking about that had as much attention at the time about 'you should buy now' that I'm glad I never bought either - remember NFTs?
"There's a range of products or options that were complete losers, and there were others that performed really well. That's the risk you'd have taken and why I don't really have any massive regrets.
"I was happy with my risk tolerance at the time and still am."
A Land Rover
Kernel founder Dean Anderson said, rather than an investment he wished he had bought, there was one he should not have sold.
"In my last year of university, 15 years ago, I bought a 1967 series 2 Land Rover. It was an absolute original, all the spare roofs, paperwork and just two owners - the army and then a retiree, who used it for his annual duck hunt.
"I paid $1800 for the whole lot. While there was definitely a sense of 'what the hell did you buy that for' from dad, soon enough, he was out and about driving it.
"It was an absolutely amazing vehicle, and responsible for many summer road trips and wine tours. Sold it a couple of years later, when it was hard to find somewhere to store it.
"I made three times my investment on it, plus plenty of memories, but it would be 30 times that today - and who knows how many more memories."
Houses or land
Property investment coach Steve Goodey said owning a big plot of land "just about anywhere" in Auckland 10 years ago would have made someone wealthy.
New Zealand's median house price has increased from about $170,000 in 2000 to just under $800,000.
As rules have changed, parcels of land that could be subdivided or house more properties have experienced significant increases in value.
RocketLab
Between August last year and July this year, RocketLab shares increased from about US$5 to US$51.
CoreLogic research head Nick Goodall said that benefited some members of his family - but not others.
"We have a small Hatch account for our children, a way of teaching them about money," he said. "We said to the kids, 'What would you like to invest in?'
"'You watch Disney, do you want to buy some shares in Disney? You're into sport, do you want to buy Nike?'
"'You like rockets, do you want to buy RocketLab?'
"This is very small scale, but we ended up buying some shares for our middle child, and there's been a 60 percent increase in three months or whatever. His sister's, like, 'I want some of that'.
"In hindsight, it's anything that's seen strong growth in value over time. I like the idea of what has done well, but also sits morally with you."
Just starting earlier
Koura founder Rupert Carlyon said he wished he had gone into the S&P500 ETF 20 years ago "and kept on doubling it".
"A safe, low-risk investment that has done extremely well.
"I simply wish I had known how easy investing could be much earlier."
Regrettable investments
Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub said he had some investments he regretted getting into, such as Ubco, which collapsed in January, but was recently saved.
"I have many such stories, but that's my fun money - mainly for start-ups, some of which become big payoffs.
"The savings I have are in diversified portfolios, because stock picking and timing the market aren't things I can do consistently.
I think focussing on one or two that got away, which can of course make someone immensely rich, distracts from the wider story of what works, regular habitual savings and the power of compounding."
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