@peterkto, I was always wandering what stops prop traders from taking risks that they would not normally take with their own money. What prevents someone from going for broke? If you are familiar with San Lucci, I think that's exactly what he did and was in fact kicked out of the prop firm (albeit with a few millions).
As stated above, it's the risk manager and the risk controls. There were issues with risk control on OTC stocks, which led to me going way over my daily risk limit on the FNMA trade.
For the next 8 years after that, I have had nice risk-adjusted returns and very little drawdown. Nothing that could be remotely called a "blow up loss". 2023 is a sliiiightly different story... but I recovered my mistakes.
Peter, I'm having that very sad "Noooooo" feeling when I start reading the last chapter of a really enjoyable book. I'm so sad to see the end coming. This has been a great read, and yours, a great story. I'm looking forward to the Epilogue to catch up on what has happened since. Well done! Thanks for sharing your story.
Final post: https://churningandburning.com/2023/12/epilogue.html Thanks to anyone who read it the whole way