Sad Story

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NDscorpini
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Sad Story

Post by NDscorpini » Fri Jun 19, 2020 2:29 am

Hi All,
I'm sure most of you have seen this news story about a 20 year old kid who killed himself after 700,000 in stock market losses. When I was at UNLV in the mid 90's I was a Finance major with a concentration in financial services. I got classes in real estate, financial market investing and insurance. My initial thoughts after reading this story was they should have a class in financial literacy in high school for people who don't go to college. It doesn't have to be comprehensive but give young people a fighting chance not to make huge mistakes they will pay for the rest of their lives.
Best wishes,
NDscorpini




https://www.marketwatch.com/story/finan ... 2020-06-14

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earik
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Re: Sad Story

Post by earik » Wed Jun 24, 2020 9:38 pm

Ouch. :( Bankruptcy seems like it would have been a better way forward than suicide, but I bet the guy was just completely beside himself with disgust at the time. Back when I used to answer the phone and chat all day long, I used to hear all sorts of stories like this. The worst I've come across was a guy who kept buying those $3k mechanical systems, then would trade until he hit a drawdown, then give up at the bottom and buy another. At the time, he was $400k in the hole. I let him try the one I was offering at the time, and he ended up going down thousands of dollars on a winning trade, basically because of a margin call and being totally overleveraged. I think he was trading with such an insane amount of leverage so he could work himself out of that hole, but it was backfiring on him in a big way. The last conversation I had with him, his wife/girlfriend came in, saw that he was on the phone with yet another trading vendor, and completely lost it. She wasn't speaking in English, so I didn't quite get the words, but her meaning (and rage!) were unmistakable. He made his apologies as best he could while she was in his face, but I never heard back, and hopefully he got scared straight.

Earik

Eagle
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Re: Sad Story

Post by Eagle » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:20 pm

A terrible alarming story which uncovers the darker side of trading. We must all be aware of the risks of losing money and always remember to cut our loses at an early stage when trading against the trend. You have to trade with reason and not expectation and as we see in the markets, the downward spiral increases in momentum at the final phases.

As a father, I can only imagine the pain and sorrow this has caused and we should never under estimate how hard it is for someone to talk about their mistakes. It's a loss of a young life which could have been saved with the right support. I am sure there will be a vast amount of stories out there of traders losing huge sums within their accounts. Unfortunately it is a side of trading that people do not like to discuss.

Best to all.

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