My British Petroleum (BP) Investment Caused Me Mental Anguish and Rand Paul is an Huge Schmuck

I have been investing in equities my entire life. Many of my investments have not been good, but they have always let me sleep well at night. I am not sort of religious zealot, but I wouldn't even dream of investing in Altria (MO) and I made decisions at certain points to divest myself of GE and Nike. There is no experience that I have ever had that compares to the experience of owning BP over the last week.

At various points over the last several years, I acquired a position in British Petroleum. It was (and is) a bigger dividend payer than the other major oil companies and seemed to have a more reasonable valuation. When news of the Gulf oil spill broke last month, I was initially inclined to believe that BP was acting responsibly and that it was just one big disaster that may not even have been BP's fault. I held the stock, even though my general rule is that when you hear of any sort of a crisis in a company you "sell first, ask questions later."

I now see a company acting environmentally irresponsibly in light of the biggest environmental disaster that the developed world has ever seen. I see Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, as an incompetent liar trying to sugar coat a tragedy that was avoidable and that will change the ecosystem of the Gulf and the Atlantic for generations. I see a company spilling huge amounts of dispersant chemicals into the Ocean in a desperate effort to lessen the PR impact of having the world see large clumps of oil cover wetlands. I see a nightmare and a bunch of self-serving Cambridge-educated executives trying to protect their cushy London jobs, but without a clue what they are doing.

Over the last week, my view has also changed on what the US government should be doing. I actually think that the US should be nationalizing BP's assets in order to pay for this (I also thought that the appropriate response after 9-11 would have been to seize Saudi's oil assets).

By yesterday afternoon, my position became squarely opposed to my equity position in BP. I sold it at a huge loss at 43.80. I may have sold it at the low. It may move much higher, but I am going to sleep much better.