Back in 2000, one of the traders featured in "Electronic day traders secrets" book, was routinely up or down 250k-500k every day, and it was not unusuall for him to be up or down 1million+ in a day. Traded at Broadway Trading.
I personally know 2 persons who lost each over 10 million$ ( yes ten million dollars). One in futures S&P, and the other one in Forex. The one in the S&P sold 210 contracts at 250$ a point at 495 in 1995. In 1994 he made more than 1 million profit. When things went wrong he waited till the market retraced. But in 1995 it didn't retrace anymore at all. After lots of margin calls his account got wiped out completely. He was lucky because he still had some 3 million on another account that he used for living. The second one got harmed with a position in Australian dollars that went wrong. The bank closed his position when his account was almost at zero. He was not so lucky, he lost all he had (inherited) and is selling textile now.
can't top that. but I did watch a friend drop 115k on the phone.com/software.com merger back in the summer of '00. in about 20 minutes. first trade of the day, too. it was the only time I'd ever seen him sweat.
seen a few guys make 100k on bunds in one good trade. seen a guy routinely let money market positions go offside by 500k and still not cut it. seen a whole hedge fund close because of a DJ US versus DJ Eurostoxx spread that went way way way way offside. don't know the losses, but it must've been millions at least. best of all, a guy at Soc Gen once bought coffee futures. he forgot the delivery date is not the same as financial futures and they had to buy the physical delivery. literally, a truckload of coffee was sent to Central London (where it probably lasted about 10 seconds).
How come in the title of the thread when you make money its "won" and not made. But lost is just lost? Sounds like the lottery to me....and probably how these big swingers attitudes caused them grief in the end. Just a thought.