Quote from aeliodon:
Wow that's really sad. Any idiot can take a reckless gamble ahead of earnings. The only solution is to have a 4. pm cut off where you can't enter any orders or have positions open greater than 2x your deposit. But there's no excuse that the prop firm can make about this. They've been in the business very long and have heard all these stories and need to be prepared to deal with these kind of situations. Any firm that's losing money like this month after month deserves it. Never extent credit to a lender who can't pay it back and don't extend leverage to anyone that can't handle it. Now that I think about it 50-1 leverage up front is stupid - every trader ought have to work hard to prove that he can handle it by showing consistency and respect for risk before he gets that kind of leverage. 700-1 is just scary - no one can handle that kind of leverage, it should never even be an option.
There was a 4pm cutoff. But the idiot knew that, that is why he shorted just 1 minute before the close. Like I said before, there are idiots that try to find ways around risk management because they think risk management is stopping them from making money.
The 700:1 wasn't suppose to be allowed. Pairco and Bright's risk management didn't catch this idiot until after he had already gone over 700:1. Bright doesn't use the risk management software to automatically limit accounts from doing certain things, like taking too much buying power. I think they only limit how many shares you can have in an individual position. No firms risk management is perfect, just like there isn't a bank vault that can't be robbed if someone is determined to do it.