Quote from austinp:
... and once you actually experience that type of forced liquidation into a big net loss, it changes everything in your mind. Now that it actually happened for real, you know it can happen again. At any time.
No doubt the same general tactic has worked out in the end literally dozens of times before. TF is spiky enough to make counter-trend moves that would "bail out" many bad situations. Surely he was deep red a ton of times before that eked out slight gains in the end for another "winning" day.
But all it takes is one time to make the wrong decision or one time of a flash-crash going against and your account is pixie dust.
People who cannot trade resort to average-down tactics. Whether they are lazy and don't want to pay the dues necessary to understand price action or honestly think they can martingale forever and block out statistical reality is debatable.
It's a sure thing this guy is emotionally changed forever now. I've known traders who wrote naked options and lost two - four times that much intraday. None of them ever recovered, all of them quickly washed out of trading soon after. Maybe this guy will be different, test of time tells.