Just like everybody else with wells of money to spend, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban couldn’t help it. Facebook’s IPO launch last month presented an opportunity to make some money; so like any enterprising businessman with pockets deeper than the Mariana Trench, Cuban pounced on it, acquiring 150,000 shares at a cost of $5 million.
Then, everything went south.
“My thesis was wrong,” Cuban said in an interview thats aired on CNBC. “I thought we’d get a quick bounce just with some excitement about the stock. I was wrong, and when you’re wrong you don’t wait, you just get out. I took a beating and left.”
According to the Daily Mail, Cuban made three separate purchases of 50,000 shares, one at $33, another at $31.97, and the last one at $32.50.
But with Facebook’s stocks continuing its downturn, Cuban decided to cut bait, selling the stocks despite taking a $220,000 hit in the process. Ever the bombastic billionaire that he is, Cuban took it with a smile on his face, laughed it off, and said the loss was nothing more than ‘gambling money’.
“Any time you try to time the market, you get what you deserve,” he said, as per the Daily Mail’s recap of the CNBC segment. “Sometimes you’re right. Sometimes you’re wrong. This time I was wrong.”
Cuban is a self-made billionaire, so he probably wouldn’t lose sleep over this. Heck, he’s made some more egregious moves as owner of the Mavs – remember him signing Erick Dampier to a seven-year, $73 million contract with money he could’ve used to resign Steve Nash? – but he doesn’t appear to be the kind of dude that would throw fits over a bad investment like this one.
Then again, it certainly helps if he still has more than $2 billion to fall back on.
