Many are out of the game or have changed their alias. This is a tough game and few survive for a long time. -20K (50 contracts on $35K account) - kamikaze years +40K (16 cars on a 150K account) - could not sleep that night and did not tell my wife about it. I guess I did not want to jinx it. LOL
I'm in awe of the size some of you do. Even in the older posts, I recognize many are still around here. I'd post my numbers but when you are playing for peanuts, why bother? I'd rather be inspired by others more accomplished.
In 2.5 years trading: Worst: -$18,000 on large STLD call position during the crash of 2008. The sad part: I had a bad feeling and almost closed the position (which I had averaged down) when it was still very close to break even and didn't find the strong support I expected. The good part: Took the loss before it would've expired worthless at -$36,000 Best: +$8600 buying a cheap stock at new highs after it had been making highs for weeks. I was a total beginner, but had noticed that when companies "raise guidance" the stocks go up a lot after that. Now how is it that my spot on beginner's instinct deserted me so quickly and turned me into a contrarian for over a year?
It seems traders, at first at least, tend to engage the market from a contrarian view doesn't it? Not sure what that is. We're always looking for counter moves. Always looking for tops and bottoms. Then there's all the averaging in against losing positions, etc. Then maybe it comes to us that we can buy a breakout instead of letting it have what looks to us to be an overextended run that we try to short only to have it run even higher. Or we try to by that bottom that is only the beginning of the selloff. With experience hopefully we learn. BTW in regards to one day losses, here's mine. And read the posts about Mark Cook and also the post right after mine here by inflector which makes me look like a big time piker. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1179612&highlight=EMC#post1179612