In "Trading Rules 2" the author say's something I've read in different books, they lose all their money because a wild event hits and takes all eleven months of gains. Using their methods according to the author leads traders to getting hard in month two and than they are fighting out of the hole to get back to even. In 2001 I met a guy who was one of Etrade's most profitable Call and Put writer, he made seven figures until the volatility went berserk and soon blew up. I thought writing "covered calls" was safe, he lost his entire net-worth plus another $1,000,000 because he was so leveraged out. Etrade use to allow guys with collateral to borrow more than 2x Overnight, he was one of them. It was dumb luck how I was able to survive those crazy events, I use to trade 20 stocks every day, either short or long and go for .1 or more. My buddies thought I was childish trying to live off $200-$500 on these trades. They were use to those giant moves back in 1995-2000 when you could make $100,000 hitting the auto-ex twenty times and selling because of Level 2 distortions.