the real scary ones are the retail brokers who put clients into "safe" tax free bond funds. Look at ONJAX for example. Down 25% YTD. In a high quality muni fund.
Major banks going bankrupt (how many of you thought that was at least improbable, if not impossible) and losing the 401k's and pensions of people who just spent 30 or 40 years of their life (including getting their education) trying to "get ahead" ... while the corporate executive (who created the mess) make-off with mountains of cash via bonsuses and golden parachutes. Then putting the taxpayer on the dole for a rushed government "bail-out" where these losers are given even more money. Now that's a horror story for you. Biggest *hustle* with the most people fucked over I've ever seen in the history of mankind ... P.S. The backlash from this is going to be worse than Jason Part II, Friday the Thirteenth Part IV, and Fredie Kruger Part V combined. :eek:
No such movies as Jason or Fredie Kruger....Jason is actually the character in Friday the 13th and Fredie Kruger was a character in Nightmare on elm st.
heres a horror story from the days of the dot com. There was this guy who at the height of the dot com, funded his account with 14 million dollars. (no idea where he got this money, but I'm guessing it was from the lottery or something like that) As the bubble burst he started losing money like mad. If i remember right, it was about 18 months later he had 125k left in his account. Oh and lets not forget about that guy here on ET that refi-ed his house at the top of the market and put 400k (and max leverage) on two different stocks. Both stocks were trading at around 50 and 65 or so very steadily, then something out of the blue happened with both of them and they both dropped like 15-20 overnight. I mean he didnt have a chance and got margin called as soon as market opened. I believe he still had a little bit left, but no way could he replace those 100s of thousands he lost overnight. I remember him asking what he was going to tell his wife and he seemed pretty upset, but a bunch of people on here really thought he might be a troll and didnt believe his story, but we will never know if it was true.
I have no stories about people that blew up other's accounts but I've more than once seen utter devastation and mental problems caused by guys that blew up their own accounts. One guy was so distracted by his options trades that we could not get any work out of him at all, he was an engineer. Then 1987 Oct came along and he was walking the halls for days feeling his way along the walls!! He just stared and felt his way around like that and then he stopped coming to work at all... another guy had his family fortune in dot coms but held on all the way down, he used to sit in the breakroom crying every afternoon with a Yahoo printout of his portfolio...