In April of 2000 i had a day i sold 8000 shares short of a stock. A few days later i had 180k cash in my account.
Those first two weeks of January were some of my best for my style and I was skiing. That was the height of the good trading and high volume in my office. We had trained just about every one in the office and we were getting 25% of the profits or so. When I came back from skiing I the business had made about half a years worth of profits. Everyone was telling me I would have killed it as a trader. I do not know if I would have been short or long during the announcement I was not in the office. But I do know that that week marked the beginning of the end of the good money for my style.
Hmmm, I don't think "realistic" and "worst-case scenario" are incompatible terms. For instance I don't think the NDX can go to zero or more importantly if it does I don't think it will matter how much money you have in your brokerage account as the only valid currency will be weapons and food so my financial risk exposure to that scenario is irrelevent. You're saying you don't think the NQ can drop more than 10% at once? Interesting. Thanks for the feedback.
You can't make what I make a month in a day. You should specify that you occasionally get lucky trading tzoo/rimm/goog, but usually get smacked doing so. Rebates and credit trading is a thing of the past, this is true; but to shun it means to have turned down easy, risk-free money. You sound like one of those haters who never actually makes money, only sees other people doing so, and then comments on it. Don't call out names. That's very immature, and further validates my opinion that you're just an immature scalper who thinks a dollar profit on 1000 shares of TASR makes you a remarkable trader. S
Guys, even tho the thread is about Blowups an obvious joke like brokerboy's is fine (key word in that sentence is obvious), but no personal abuse and no public tirades against each other. Let's keep it friendly as best we can, please.
What exactly do you mean by blowup? I've always thought that meant a total cleaning of the account, meaning you just ended you trading career. Some of you are mentioning bad losses & bad drawdown days, everyone has those, but someone wiping out their account in one day, that's another story. This guy at our office just started and I think he wiped out his account in 3 days after spending a couple of weeks getting used to the system. Apparently taking 2k shares in AAPL and RIMM and aiming for 5 cent profits but holding for 80 cent losses is not a viable strategy.
I saw someone lose more than $15 Million+ of his own money over the course of a few weeks. This was at an affiliate of Worldco. I'm sure some of you know what I'm referring to.
So we've heard...................... .................................................................... I think this is one of the top stories from the tech bubble in prop shops...................................... Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!!!!!!!!!! I guess he didnt have enough options to hedge himself on his positions???????????? :eek: :eek: I heard about this one severla times. What a phenominon. Crazy times!!