Man, I waded into options. And I'm sure all the option folks where like "MMMMM Fresh Meat." But my very first trade made like $400. I got my butt handed to me later though. And several times after that. They made that $400 back many,many times over. In the end however, I paid for part of my house with one awesome option trade that cranked in $30k. So, now that I am way ahead in the option game, I never touch them - too scared.
Mill City Gold, traded on the Vancouver stock exchange, in 1994. Bought at about 75 cents, kept averaging down, held through some reverse stock spilts, name changes, etc. Got out of it for about a 90% loss eventually. Still have 12 shares in a brokerage account somewhere that I can't dump. I think it's still a 10 cent stock.
My first stock was OWC......at 1.20 or somtheing like that and I sold it on a bounce to 2.00.....BIOT was like 15 cents and I sold it for 60 cents. BUD was the third one and I made money on that too! I was just playing around with a 1k account. I really thought I found the way to ritches. Did I get a nasty surprise after that! I put 150k into the account.......Everything I touched turned to shit!
My first stock purchase was Nortel Networks (NT) in late 2000. I bought because it had a S&P 5 star rating. I purchased 25 shares for $45 and sold it about 10 months later for $8. About the time I sold my shares, the guy in the cube next to me mentioned something about technical Analysis. I said "What's that" ? Iv'e been hooked ever since.
Long BAMM (Books a Million) .. Bought something like 200 shares at 30 something and sold 6 hours later at 30 5/8 for +$150 .. and I was using Yahoo Delayed quotes, lol.
UBID, bought at 40 3/4, sold a few days later at $176. That hooked me back in 1998. Of course after I got bored w/ only making 5-10% for doing basically nothing (lucky guesses in a strong bull market), I turned it over to mutual fund. I didn't have time for this and a money manager would get me like 50% a year, right? hehehe ... lesson learned, and 5-10% a trade would be a really great day these days. Oh ya, the mutual fund lost around 70% ... I've been sufficiently humbled after quadrupling my money on the very first go.