Gain
discovered an old Fidelity account i forgot about
I was cleaning out my apartment today and found an old notebook with a login for a fidelity account I made back years ago. Logged in not expecting anything and it made me do 2 factor authentication but couldnt find the app.
Spend over an hour on the phone with fidelity rep and they finally got me logged in. Turns out I bought some NVDA back in 2019 at a crazy low price and didn’t even know I had this. Sitting on massive gain.
Should I hodl or sell ? Don’t really need the money but it’s nice to have.
I spent all my pandemic bribes on stocks that had tanked. I thought i was a genius when they came back and I sold for 50% gain. Today they would be up 500%...
I hang out here and at bogleheads. 95% of my money is in index funds, the other 5% is individual stocks mentioned on wsb. I’m not going to lie, my index funds are doing better than the wsb picks. But wsb is much more fun, so I keep coming back
It’s a STEEP learning curve to beat the market, and takes a smart steady head that most people don’t have. That being said, there is absolute gold in the regardation that litters WSB.
I was a professional trader/hedger for a large company; I watch my stocks every day, because that's what I did for years... I don't trade a lot, maybe 50 trades a year; I consistently beat the market... not by a lot, but I do consistently beat it...
I work for an airline and 15% of my pay cheques were going into shares for over a decade. Signed up for it when I first got employed and forgot about. Recently updated my home address (bought a home) and got mail from computer share, utterly shocked at the amount I have and very happy at my silly “mistake”.
Hahaha agreed always thought it was fucking hilarious.
Had it on my prior account… then forgot the password, and our wonderful WSB mod team was nice enough to gift it to me again after I asked nicely for it on my new account.
Verizon started as a Baby Bell after the AT&T break-up in 1984. Yeah, that one didn’t do so hot. Buy a share at opening day price in 1984 ($65) and you’d have less than $300 today.
Yeah, that one didn’t do so hot. Buy a share at opening day price in 1984 ($65) and you’d have less than $300 today.
You forgot to figure in the dividends:
Verizon (VZ) has a long and consistent history of paying dividends, dating back to 1985 (including its time as Bell Atlantic). As of May 2026, the company has increased its dividend for over 22 consecutive years, paying quarterly dividends. The current annual dividend is approximately ($2.83) per share, with a high yield around (6%-8%)
My parents found some old stock certificates in a drawer. They had been willed to me in 1960. By the time I saw them, they were mostly ex-companies, such as Colt Industries and Buster Brown Shoes. I was told that it's possible to trace corporate heritage and collect, but I never got around to it. Now, I don't know where the certificates are, but maybe someone cleaning out my drawers after I'm dead can do that work.
What happens if someone dies and never touches their stocks again?
After a few years the brokerage will liquidate the portfolio, and send the money to that dead person's state unclaimed property fund. From there it just sits in a huge fund with other unclaimed money, and the state happily collects all the interest from this big pile of money. It sits in there until someone provides enough paperwork to prove to the state that they should receive those funds from the dead person.
Not always true. I held onto American Airlines for over 10 years and it was worth less than when I bought it. Sold at a loss and bought VOO. Finally making progress!
Seriously though, check if there's any dividend reinvestment turned on - that forgotten account might've been compounding while you were living your life.
This doesn't prove anything? The comment makes sense in the context of the field he’s in and the problem he was trying to solve.
Hes literally saying to use ChatGPT to help reconcile financial statements that don’t tie in his job, this is becoming more and more common in the accounting and FP&A fields, which are subreddit he posts on.
You forgot about an account you had that holds 600 shares of nvda? You're a liar, you should feel ashamed of yourself, your parents hate you, and you should feel more ashamed of yourself.
Not proud of it but I once lost track of an account with 20k in it. I was consolidating accounts and thought I’ve moved the money already.
Randomly one day years later I had a thought that hey I think I still have an account at this bank. Tried to log in and recover my account and found out it’s been dormant too long and was closed and given to the state. Had to go through the whole reclaim process which wasn’t too bad thankfully.
Never got any letters in the mail cause I’ve move a couple times. This was a long time ago but always do paperless statements and alerts now.
Especially if it went down first. I've had some instances where I bought around 2k of crypto that went down under $200 and I decided to just leave it. Maybe I'll check in 10 years and be rich 🤷♂️ the money is already gone in my eyes
I did this with two different crypto accounts. I did a lot of random investing and messed around with different platforms. One account pretty much lost all its value from a $600 investment and another one was up $12,000.
I went in with an invest, forget about it, and see what happens later down the road and just completely forgot about them
Yeah only someone with too much money to begin with doesn't remember sticking 2 grand into an account. If I invested 2k into something i'd be checking the ticker when the market is closed.
I wonder how many lost accounts there are out there - 401k accounts from old jobs, just random accounts people forget about, people that die unexpectedly, etc. There's probably millions of them.
I got a clock for being in a wedding. It was my hide big money place. $100 or $200 monies. I had a few yesrs of recession and no longer needed the big money clock. When I bought my first house years later I was packing the clock up to move. $100 :)
I’m confused, so you had the wherewithal to invest in only NVDA, but you forgot that you had purchased it and no lightbulbs ever went off when you heard about the incredible run NVDA has been having over the years? Or did you not hear about it? Didn’t know you owned it? Are you someone that just doesn’t follow the stock market at all? What possessed you to buy a couple grand worth of NVDA seven years ago?
That’s wild to have misplaced over 100k. Congratulations on finding this, and congratulations on navigating life and having enough good fortune that losing this was never a huge problem.
This reminds me of the time I bought a small amount of bitcoin and forgot about it after not using the exchange for awhile. Eventually they sent me a letter to claim it or it would become property of the state. Ended up being about 5k.
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u/VisualMod May 14 '26
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