heres a horror story from the days of the dot com. There was this guy who at the height of the dot com, funded his account with 14 million dollars. (no idea where he got this money, but I'm guessing it was from the lottery or something like that) As the bubble burst he started losing money like mad. If i remember right, it was about 18 months later he had 125k left in his account.
Oh and lets not forget about that guy here on ET that refi-ed his house at the top of the market and put 400k (and max leverage) on two different stocks. Both stocks were trading at around 50 and 65 or so very steadily, then something out of the blue happened with both of them and they both dropped like 15-20 overnight. I mean he didnt have a chance and got margin called as soon as market opened. I believe he still had a little bit left, but no way could he replace those 100s of thousands he lost overnight. I remember him asking what he was going to tell his wife and he seemed pretty upset, but a bunch of people on here really thought he might be a troll and didnt believe his story, but we will never know if it was true.