I did add cash at the end of 2008. Forgot how much. I belived it was 100k. My starting balance this year is 756k. On October 31, 2008, my balance was 1.2M. There was less than 100k in early 2009. My whole networth was in this account. What saved me is that I can tolerate the pain. I never lost sleep since I have another good paying job. Luckily the IRS approved my trading business and I was able to use Mark to Market accounting. So I was able to offset my wages against loss in 2008, 2009. I did not believe that I can recover so quickly. My approach is rather simple. Build a diversified portfolio by selling puts. Now I don't want to push my luck any further. I want to do this in a much smaller scale. That is why I liquidated the account on Tuesday. Talking about timing. I left at least 150k on the table...I usually don't close the positions until I was assigned the puts.
