Best day was after 9/11 had about 6K share basket of stock long, and caught a 40 point futures rally.
Best ES trade 22 points.
Worst day lost 10K shorting GLW when it was in the 70s; man I recall that I almost killed the neigbors pit bull that day.
And the one's that got away are even worse; like recently was SS BBH at 135 when it was around 131, I moved my stop to 136 and got stopped out on 7/28!! Never reentered...
worst: lost $50K in the swiss franc back in 1988 in about a minute on a false embassy bombing report out of Reuters. Was trading in the pit at the time and was a cocky little shit, deserved it.
in my more arrogant days i went into an opex week fully loaded with options i was convinced would have me in retirement by friday. instead they went to zero.
lost 90% of my year's profits in one violent move. still hurts to think about, but it was the event that really got me THINKING about the market.
glad it happened then and not once i achieve legendary status.
probably not a coincidence, best trade came 3 weeks before when i doubled my account balance in one day (plus an opening gap). for a brief moment i thought i was g-d.
I was an overnight trader at a highly respected prop firm sometimes mentioned on ET. In 1997, I went long 1500 shares of AET into earnings. Lost 17 1/2 points. Before that, I was a rising star with lots of potential. To this day, I have yet to truly recover.