Ever Blow Up Your Account?

$1.4M to $60K in 6 months trying to trade the post-.com bubble back in 2001. Considering that I had started with about $30K in 1998, this was not quite a blow up since I still ended up profitable in the grand scheme of things.

Racked up a whole bunch of long term capital losses in 2001 that I'm still crediting over into my 2007 tax return.
 
Biggest losses was listening to other people's advise. Mary Meeker in 2001 or so, Yahoo is cheap at $100 - cost me $10k.

First Future trading account with a managed futures firm. The program was rated in the top 10 for safety with a maximum 1.5% drawdown per month. Started with $20k, it grew to $36k and then blew up as they wrote naked call options on natural gas futures. The account went to -$18k (yes, that is a minus). The account was gone and I had to cough up another $18k within 3 business days.

After that I learned my lessons, managed my own stuff, don't listen to anybody and never blew up again.
 
Quote from Beebers:

Biggest losses was listening to other people's advise. Mary Meeker in 2001 or so, Yahoo is cheap at $100 - cost me $10k.

First Future trading account with a managed futures firm. The program was rated in the top 10 for safety with a maximum 1.5% drawdown per month. Started with $20k, it grew to $36k and then blew up as they wrote naked call options on natural gas futures. The account went to -$18k (yes, that is a minus). The account was gone and I had to cough up another $18k within 3 business days.

After that I learned my lessons, managed my own stuff, don't listen to anybody and never blew up again.
More...


who are "they" and why you had to come up with 18k if "they" wrote calls
 
No real blow up but I started trading futures in the end of 2005 with 3 automated systems working on 12K...After 3 months of trading, I was at 6,9K but let the system run because It was not where I was supposed to stop the system...

Eventually, the 3 systems recovered the loss, but looking back at it, this was not a really reliable kind of trading...LOL
 
"They" are the Managed Futures Firm which will execute transactions in your name. Naked Calls have unlimited loss potential ..... (So I actually lucked out - it could have been a lot worse).



Quote from Beebers:

Biggest losses was listening to other people's advise. Mary Meeker in 2001 or so, Yahoo is cheap at $100 - cost me $10k.

First Future trading account with a managed futures firm. The program was rated in the top 10 for safety with a maximum 1.5% drawdown per month. Started with $20k, it grew to $36k and then blew up as they wrote naked call options on natural gas futures. The account went to -$18k (yes, that is a minus). The account was gone and I had to cough up another $18k within 3 business days.

After that I learned my lessons, managed my own stuff, don't listen to anybody and never blew up again.




who are "they" and why you had to come up with 18k if "they" wrote calls
 
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