I have enjoyed one enormous benefit from the COVID-19 outbreak... Because school has been canceled, my two daughters have been home every day since mid-March. Getting to spend time with them every single day is a blessing. They're 11 and 13 years old, and they still like hanging around with me. But I'm no fool... I'm very aware that the window of time where they still think I'm worth listening to is vanishing quickly. I'm determined to take advantage of every second that I have in which they still want to learn things it took me decades to figure out. One lesson that I want to teach my kids is that a willingness to admit you have made a mistake is a powerful asset. Far too many people (me included) cling to their opinions long after they have been proven wrong. This unwillingness to admit that you are wrong can cost you friends, time and - in the stock market - a lot of money. A mistaken belief that I have held on to for far too long is that putting money into the biotech sector is more like speculation than investing. I've seen the absurd returns that some biotech stocks have put up and wrongly assumed that the entire sector is too risky. And that assumption has cost me... The chart below compares the value of $10,000 invested in the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (Nasdaq: IBB) at its inception in 2001 with $10,000 invested in the S&P 500 over the same period. Over this two-decade stretch (that is long term, folks), the biotech ETF has smashed the performance of the S&P 500. The $10,000 investment in biotech is now worth $42,690 versus $23,140 from the same amount invested in the S&P 500. I honestly had no idea that biotech had done this much better than the S&P 500 over this long of a time period. There is nothing risky about an entire sector that vastly outperforms. My ignoring of this sector is a mistake that has cost me a lot of money. Now I'm trying to learn from that mistake. | 
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