The date was 3 November 2022. Shares of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), the parent company of Facebook, had plunged below US$90. By then, shares were down by a gut-wrenching 77% from their 2021 peak. The stock price had gone nowhere for seven years, critics of long-term investing pointed out. Furthermore, if shares are down by THAT much, you have clearly overpaid for them. If you were any good at valuing the stock, you would have sold out earlier, the critics pile on. Above all, you have definitely made a mistake in buying Meta shares … … but DID you? Today, Meta shares trade at close to US$512 per share, up over 475% from their low on 3 November 2022. Even if you had the great misfortune of buying at its 2021 peak, you would still be up by over 34%. For the maths geeks out there, that’s still a 12% per year gain, better than the long-term average of the US stock market of 10% per year. Not bad for an “unlucky” investor....