Ever Blow Up Your Account?

Discussion in 'Professional Trading' started by ps0013, Mar 18, 2008.

  1. ~$500--> ~20k+ and blow up 3 times. Spot FX 1:500 lev
     
    #31     Mar 19, 2008
  2. 30k to 45k, then 1 day cost me 15k, and back to basic. Then for the next 12 months or so, I got it down to like 12k. I still haven't recover my loss.
     
    #32     Mar 19, 2008
  3. Vienna

    Vienna

    Not myself, but the famous (famous on ET that is) master Trading Wizerd, Guru and world class financier John Carter traded money for me once and went from a 200k account to a 120k account in a little over a week, nonchalantly ignoring clearly agreed upon risk guidelines ("2% of account max risk per position") and evaporating this huge sum before I could even blink. I finally believed my eyes, understood that the man had no effing idea what he was doing and yanked the plug....

    I myself have never managed to even come close to this abysmal performance by a "pro", not even in my worst times.
    :)
     
    #33     Mar 19, 2008
  4. Blew up on paper ---- more than I can ever remember!

    Blew up with real money ---- three times --- small amounts but damn did I learn alot. Hmmmm that was in my college days.
     
    #34     Mar 19, 2008
  5. pneuma

    pneuma

    85% drawdown over 6 months, and traded out of it again without additional capital.
     
    #35     Mar 19, 2008
  6. can not say blow up my account. I did not realize I withdrew 80% of my account already, there is no enough fund to trade the normal size I trade. in BSC huge down day on March 14 2008, I try to pick panic sell and turn around to flip to short selling covering rally, I bought it from 35 to 30, exceeded my day trading power, get margin called and killed by IB just at the bottom, get pissed by IB, and see BSC rose from 26.+ to 36+, lost 60% of my remaining account value and my account fell below $25k day trading power, that drove my nuts, and I can immeadiately transfer funds to get the money back!

    just shit
     
    #36     Mar 19, 2008
  7. oops, should be: I can not transfer funds immeadiately to recoup my loss.

    when I read BSC was bought $2 a peiece by JPM, feel better. but the loss is horrible, I never blew away so much money in a single day (60% of my account value)! I normally focus on day trading, love to buy panic sell. I did very successfully on WM. this time it makes me nervous to do this kind of trades!
     
    #37     Mar 19, 2008
  8. Sure, back in 2001. Went from +100k to needing to go back to work for a little while until I learned how to trade. I had zero business trading then. I made decent money (luck/bull market) but didn't know how to keep it.
     
    #38     Mar 19, 2008
  9. Nanook

    Nanook

    Heather: $48million for 4 years of hell = $12million/year ($1million/month)
    Child support= $70,000/month (estimate until 18 years old = 14 years x $840,000/year = $11,760,000)
    Grand total = $59,760,000

    Kristen: $4,300/night x 365 = $1,569,000/year x 14 years = $21,973,000

    P. McCartney

    :mad:
     
    #39     Mar 20, 2008
  10. I was doing good, investing in stocks for about 5 years, then a coworker told me about options and how good lenny dystra was. That's when shit hit the fan.

    Didnt blow up but lost about 55k buying naked DITM calls when i first started trading options following lenny dykstra's "strategy" - naked ditm 3month+ call with $1 max profit limit and martingale as stop loss :mad: Now looking back, cant believe how stupid i was.

    That fucker had a nice chart showing off his profit each week during the bull, then when the market turned he said he will be "away" for a few months but promised to continue update the p&l chart each week and advise on the open positions (still about 20 trades open) to "not leave the followers hanging".

    Never heard from him again, thestreet.com removed all traces of his stuff. All his open trades got killed when the market continued to tank, i feel sorry for the poor saps who continue to follow his plan of doubling down when the naked calls moved against them.

    Luckily my stock investment was making good profit during that time, so it balanced each other out. I was only down a few k total at the end.

    Expensive lesson in options and well deserved, glad i took the loss early and that really got me started in learning options and understanding its true fundamentals. It's so much more fascinating than doing technical on a stock
     
    #40     Mar 20, 2008