Reading through this, and after recently suffering a 64.1% dd on c2, if the account wasn't meant for a fully leveraged trade, indeed this is stupid, but it wouldn't be if he intended to do this the whole time. It doesn't sound like he typically traded this way, and with leverage of course multi hundred thousand dollar losses are possible, but I think he went "on tilt."
I think he was revenge trading, and had a knack for scalping making too little profit for the risk he was taking. I think he'll react differently in the future, but 800+TF on less than a million is not reasonable.
I will say does it matter if he lost this in a day? My trend strategies are risking with a target of $10,000 profit per contract per month on about 7 or 9 different contracts risking $500k to make $2.5m. I'm not sure if the fact that it was one day is any different than realized drawdown of a half mil with about $750k per year for profits. Is this any different? I say that because he might have millions, so a few hundred thousand would be a very decent chunk of any account. I'd have to say we don't have any proof of any of this, but if it were true, if it were true, I think he felt wealthy enough to afford taking a risk, but I don't know if his indicators were pointing down at the time or not. I don't think it matters, because that was his best judgement, and if it loses, then you lose. I'm not taking the attitude that all small traders lose, because unless you're in the billions you are a small trader.
Buffet takes hits like these every second of the day, but is far more succesful and even he has had his share of losses, even catastrophic ones with stocks going to zero. Rare, true, but even he.
