Market veteran Steve Hanke says his best investment is a Patek Philippe watch he bought at 16 — and shares his biggest regret

Steve Hanke says the best investment of his life is a Patek Philippe pocket watch he bought at 16. The veteran trader said the pleasure he gets from admiring the timepiece is a type of dividend. Hanke said his biggest investing mistake was not buying Iowa farmland as his grandfather did. A pocket watch and a parcel of farmland. Veteran trader Steve Hanke counts those two items among the best investments and biggest misses of his life. Hanke, 83, started trading soybeans at age 14, and he's been playing the currency and commodity markets ever since. The longtime professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University served as president of Toronto Trust Argentina when it was the world's best-performing emerging-market mutual fund in 1995. Hanke spoke to Business Insider for the debut story in our new "Hits, Misses, and Millions" series, in which we ask elite investors and business leaders to share their best and worst investments.

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