Thought this thread might get some interesting stories. One of mine is: the day before NWA was going to decide to declare bankruptcy or not, options IV was flying. I couldn't pass that up so shorted some $5 sp/calls 3 months out, bought some stock at $2.00 + to cover some of the calls and shorted the $2.50 puts that were about 1 year out. The premium from the puts and calls more than paid for the stock. I figured they would declare bankruptcy, the calls would expire worthless, the stock would go down for awhile then come back up and the puts would expire worthless, or at least be worth less than the premium I received, and that after reorganization the stock would go up. It went as I thought with the stock dropping to $.30 then shooting up to about $7 right before my puts expired worthless. I also sold the stock at a profit . I say it was dumb luck because shortly after, NWA declared the stock would be worthless when they emerged from bankruptcy protection and the stock dropped to less than a penny. Any good ones?
My story happened yesterday. In last 15 minutes before market close, I saw SNCR was dropping fast from 39.00 to 35.00, without knowing it would report earning after hour, I kept buying it until I used up all my buying power. When market closed, I was in a loss of $10K+ with a larger than usual size. Only then did I check the news and know the earning conference call would start in 4:30PM. I was hitting myself for this terrible trade and imagining another big gap down next morning. I did not want to cut loss as next available bid would cost me another $20K loss. I hold my breath and waiting for the earning report. Here is the lucky part, before 4:30PM, some bids came in and moved price from 35.5 to 38.50, I exited my position along the way for about $8K gain. SNCR eventually moved up to $42 after conference call.
yea... made a couple bucks back in the day on Transmeta and it came up in something I was reading online couple weeks ago. Bought 1000 shares around 5 on monday as a lottery ticket for the intel settlement..... Needless to say I was thinking I'd be sitting on it for longer than 2 days. opened at 15 on wednesday..... Dumb Luck
Here is mine. Back in around 1998, I was shorting AMCC for 200 share ( around $3000 ). The market fell for some reason that I forgot already. I covered right at the bottom, but I covered 300 sh and ended up owing 100 sh. That 100 sh ( ~$1500 ) went on and multiply x30 times and become $45000 at market top. Pure dump luck
Ok, so it was early Sept. 2001, and I'm long oil, and defense contractors, and short the air lines and S&P. I turn on the TV on the morning of the 11th to check out Katie Couric. She is reporting that a small plane just hit one of the towers. As she's reporting with her back to the towers the towel wrappers send another plane into... ah what the hell, I'm just bullshitting guys. That would have been a dream trade. Could you imagine being short when they start blowing up suitcase nukes and dirt bombs. This is such a land of oppurtunity guys. What a country. Anybody out there know what the over/under is on Atlanta running out of water? I think going long the bottlers and perfume companies is a good play here. When they run out of water it's going to be whore baths and 10 dollar bottles of Disani. haha Rennick out haha ps. But seriously, I was long the ammo companies when the Krauts bombed Pearl Harbor
I day trade from my 9-5 job. Last week there was a very hectic day at work. I was trying to multitask talking on the phone, keeping an eye out for my boss, reading charts and placing trades all at the same time. Naturally this caused me to make a dumb trade on the S&P futures because I misread a chart. The dumb luck part was that when I went to close the losing trade, I accidently bought more futures instead of selling. Immediately after that, the S&P turned strongly around in my favor. When I checked my account balance an hour later, it was like finding free money.
I had roughly $3000 in a Roth in 2003 and completely forgot about it since I also have a SEP that is much larger. About 2 years later I received a letter from Ameritrade with the roth account number. I had completely forgot about this account and decided to log on to the account to see how much I had in there. When I opened the account I squinted at a $9300 equity! I knew I didn't have that much so I looked and I had bought a very small amound of ASEI (I don't even know the name) that had more than tripled in the last 2 years! This is completely pure dumb luck because I know I would have sold it for a small profit had I been watching it.
It was June this year when I firmly believed the German DAX was about to collapse. I simply compared the charts of 1998 to 2007 and figured it rises and falls the exact same weeks. Convinced that the collapse was near I bought 5000 EUR worth of put options (the most speculative out-of-the-money, short-term expiry) on the DAX which after a week were worth nearly one tenth because the index just rose further. I didn't want to close the trade somehow and held on to them although as a rational trader I should have cut losses already. One or two weeks later the DAX indeed sold off and my options were worth - guess what - 5000 EUR again. End of the story is I didn't make a profit but I was lucky to get out at breakeven after having a rollercoaster ride.
last year after months of flat system trading, i bought ten ZGs between late feb and the end of march, and managed to hold most of that size all the way to the top. i took a big step back the day silver sold off, but held most and eventually saw the position through the top. i was out of all of it over 750, partly because a friend was coming to visit and it had been an exhausting ride. as it started falling i decided not to mess with it and walked away from the market and the trade completely. in the end i made about 150k in 3 months off that trade which is a lot for me. i didn't realize it at the time but it was a very stupid, very lucky situation. i tried to repeat the experience in a variety of markets, mostly shorting er2's in quantity, and slowly gave it all back over the following 6-8 months or so. i've had more success over the long haul with low leverage and system trading although the speed of adaptation has gone way up, things are tapping out much faster. hanging in there has been tough
Last January(07) I had a 18 contracts long in the ER2. I closed out before lunch and had to go do some shopping. I cam bac at 2:30 to learn I still had 5 contracts long for a net gain of 3K. to this day I don't know what I did other than to say I just messed up.