Billion Dollar Losers...

Aside from a few genious minds, this market has made most investors suffer egregious losses. Now, I will never make excuses and try to hide from my investing mistakes (you can't learn that way), but I will occassionally try to remind myself that no one is perfect. Here's one example of a wise man who some BIG MISTAKES recently:

Sheldon Adelson (owner of Las Vegas Sands)

LOSS: $30 billion

In 2006, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson was the world's third richest man and he boldly predicted that he would soon overtake Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to ultimately claim the top spot. But the markets, like craps tables don't always behave as you'd like. The 75 year-old CEO of Las Vegas Sands saw that play out this year, as he lost $30 billion of his net worth. That's the same as losing $100 million a day, $4 million an hour or just more than $1,000 a second.


In fact, Adelson's is possibly the largest paper loss in U.S. history, even including the Rockefellers' $1 billion loss in the Great Depression, adjusted for inflation. (It's not the biggest loss worldwide, though.)

As a result of his massive losses, Adelson, who is probably best known for his Venetian casino on the Las Vegas strip, had to halt plans to expand into Macau and Singapore, which he was still pursuing a few months ago, despite the economic downturn and rivals like Steve Wynn's decisions to cut back on overseas development. Instead, he's invested nearly $1 billion of his family's money into Las Vegas Sands to stave off bankruptcy.

See the complete list here. Interestingly Adelson was #3 on this list (that means two other guys lost more than $30 billion dollars in this meltdown.