When I worked for The Hulbert Financial Digest, the independent watchdog of the investment newsletter industry, subscribers would often tell me I was fortunate to get paid to read dozens of investment newsletters each month.

And it was indeed a veritable fount of information. But that didn’t stop me from making rookie mistakes when I started using the newsletters we tracked to select stocks for my own portfolio.

This was during the period when the decade-long resource boom was back in full swing after shaking off the worst of the global financial crisis. I had watched various commodities soar leading up to the Great Recession and lamented having missed out on that incredible run.

Although I had near-daily exposure to the hardcore gold bugs who dominate a corner of the investment newsletter arena, I wanted a metal with a more practical application.

And one of the metals that experienced the most dramatic gains before the Great Recession was uranium. In fact, uranium’s price chart went so parabolic that it prompted one notoriously self-promoting newsletter editor, who had previously dubbed himself “the original goldbug,” to rechristen himself as “the original uranium bug.”

In less than seven years, uranium prices went from an all-time low, just above USD7 per pound at the end of 2000, to an all-time high of USD152 per pound. That is a simply staggering performance.

It was also the source of my first lesson: You shouldn’t extrapolate the recent past into the future, especially when extraordinary events fundamentally alter the situation.

Following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, I thought Cameco Corp (TSX: CCO, NYSE: CCJ) would prove to be the ultimate contrarian play. Instead, it’s turned out to be the biggest stinker in my personal portfolio, though largely for reasons beyond the company’s control.

The Canadian miner is one of the world’s largest uranium producers, accounting for about 16% of global production from its mines in Canada, the U.S. and Kazakhstan.

As the Fukushima story kept getting worse in the months that followed, shares of Cameco, which had hit a post–financial-crisis high of USD43.59 just a month before the incident, accelerated their decline.

I first picked up shares in the mid-20s, thinking I had scored an unbelievable bargain. Surely, a single accident, even one on the scale of Fukushima, wasn’t enough to stop the global nuclear renaissance.

However, the resulting furor prompted Japan’s government to progressively idle nearly all of the country’s 50 reactors, which had generated about 30% of the island nation’s energy.

Before the shutdowns, Japan had accounted for roughly 10% of global uranium consumption, based on data from the International Atomic Energy Agency. And that demand has been sidelined for more than four years, with Japan’s nuclear regulator only just now preparing to approve the incremental restart of the country’s reactors.

That seemingly excessive reaction wasn’t confined to Japan. Shortly thereafter, Germany shuttered eight of its 17 reactors, with plans to mothball the remainder of its nuclear fleet by 2022. Before Fukushima, Germany had accounted for about 4.4% of global uranium demand.

Switzerland followed suit with a similar policy, while other countries slowed or halted plans for new reactors.

Then I learned my second lesson: Don’t average down on a falling knife.

That summer I gleefully used each new low as an opportunity to add more shares, foolishly assuming that they would be back above USD40 in just a year or two.

Instead, the stock has continued to bleed, with the depreciation of the Canadian dollar compounding the hemorrhaging. Cameco’s shares currently trade around USD15.

After uranium hit a post–financial-crisis high of USD73 per pound just a month before Fukushima, the metal’s price more than halved, and it still trades nearly 47% below the aforementioned high, around USD39.

Nevertheless, Morningstar notes that the world is running a uranium deficit, with the gap between production and demand currently filled by decades-old inventories, including decommissioned warheads. And global uranium consumption is forecast to rise 3% annually over the next 10 years, the strongest growth since the 1970s.

According to Bloomberg, the consensus forecast is for the metal to climb to USD60 per pound by 2017.

Relief appears to be on the horizon. Even so, I probably should have dumped the stock when I had the chance.

That’s the third lesson: It’s extremely difficult to let go of your losers.

But perhaps I and other long-suffering Cameco shareholders will soon get another chance. Last week, The Globe and Mail reported that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in advanced talks with Cameco to supply his country with uranium.

The speculation is that a finalized deal could be announced as soon as this week, during Mr. Modi’s visit to Canada.

India has ambitious plans to boost nuclear power from 3% of the country’s total electric-generating capacity to 25% by 2050. It plans to add another 17 reactors to its fleet by 2024, bringing the country’s total to 37.

It’s too soon to tell what a long-term supply contract with India would mean for Cameco’s bottom line in the short term, but hope springs eternal for dead money.