Petro Kazakhstan (PKZ)

PKZ When I bought Petro Kazakhstan it was called Hurricane Hydrocarbons with ticker HHL.

This seemed like a good idea at the time. There had been a big price breakout on higher than average volume, which is supposed to be a sign that it's a real trend.

What I didn't appreciate was that when stocks break out like this, the price usually falls back a bit in a few days, and that's a much better time to buy than on the initial spurt.

With Washington pounding the drumbeat of war, investing in an oil producing company seemed like a good idea. It was not implausible that an Iraq war could set off the entire Middle East and disrupt the US's precious oil supply. The supply from Venezuela had already been curtailed by labor problems.

There's always a need for more oil, right? Within days, HHL shares started to fall. "It's just a "correction," I said to myself. "It's the war in Iraq," I explained to myself. To make a long, sad story short, I clung to hope way too long and ultimately bailed after losing 20% of my investment.

Although I had set a loss limit, at which point I would sell and cut my losses, I didn't follow through on my decision. Hope triumphed over realism. Eventually, the price dropped so low that I sold at nearly 20% loss. Painful as it was, my memory of hanging on to my Enron shares all the way into bankruptcy was more painful.

As luck would have it, the stock turned around the very next day and began another upward climb. I suppose I could have jumped back in again and recovered most, if not all, of my loss, but that runs the risk of sending "good money after bad."

Although the stock has since gotten back up to $12, there seems to be pretty strong resistance to going higher.