To whoever it is who lost money trading... consider it a blessing you lost money trading and just charge it to tuition. The best lesson the market can ever give you is the knowledge that you're not invincible and to respect the market. Now go back, review your trades and examine why you lost the money you lost and start learning from them. If you need some inspiration, read Jesse Livermore's "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" which is a must-read for any aspiring trader. He got bankrupt several times but he was able to make spectacular comebacks.
I lost waaayyyy more money than most of you young guys and the sad fact of it is I didn't even lose it trading so I learned nothing from it. I lost a big chunk of it investing in a disaster of a mutual fund i.e. Dodge & Cox, who turns out loaded up on stocks like Fannie Mae, AIG, Wachovia, etc. The one lesson I got from this is that I should start trading and not investing in mutual funds even if that fund has a long history of outperformance. Gee whiz, I didn't need to lose hundreds of thousand of dollars to learn that lesson. So consider yourself lucky to lose a couple of thousand on trades you can actually learn from.
I lost waaayyyy more money than most of you young guys and the sad fact of it is I didn't even lose it trading so I learned nothing from it. I lost a big chunk of it investing in a disaster of a mutual fund i.e. Dodge & Cox, who turns out loaded up on stocks like Fannie Mae, AIG, Wachovia, etc. The one lesson I got from this is that I should start trading and not investing in mutual funds even if that fund has a long history of outperformance. Gee whiz, I didn't need to lose hundreds of thousand of dollars to learn that lesson. So consider yourself lucky to lose a couple of thousand on trades you can actually learn from.