My Story- Lessons learned

Quote from mhashe:

I'm curious, have you seen anyone else doing similar returns ( ie 10K to 40 mil) in recent years?
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You could have done it with Google, taking huge risk, and staying in.

My guy did not start with 10K, but it was a 5 figure number.

But to answer your question no, not the big runs, we were talking a stock taking a run from a few dollars a share to 400 dollars a share. Internet Bubble Stocks.

Back then there were a few hundred Google's to pick from.

It wasn't trading, it was holding a huge long position, and the whole market was hyped to the max.

If I recall his big position was Rambus.

He held options and just taking huge risk, and adding to his position.

Now, that we are down to earth, I don't see it happening again.

Decimals, Market Makers, NASD rules, SEC rules, and Direct Access, all took away the advantages of 1997 to 2000.

An elite few took advantage of a system that was rapidly changing in 1997 and on to 2000.

Then there were the early prop traders, trading 100 to 1000 tickets a day. Some put away their money while they could.
 
I don't know if this guy is for real or not, but seriously what were all of you guys who thing that this story is so incredible doing in the 90's? This makes me think a lot of the people on EliteTrade are much MUCH younger than they let on. This story is not that incredible. Almost everyone who was in their 20's and working in the tech industry in the 90's knows some co-worker who made a ton of money and then lost it, gambling on internet stocks. I don't personally know anyone who turned 25k into 25mil, but I do know several people that at one time or another had added 2 zero's to their account balances, gambling on internet stocks (before losing most or all of it.)

The accounting systems of brokers were not all computerized and automated back then either. It wasn't like how it is now-a-days with IB where the second you run out of margin their computers automatically liquidate you. Back then, this stuff required human intervention, and the retail brokerages ' systems slowed to a crawl on busy days. It's not so incredible that this guy was holding an 8 mil position with only 2 mil in margin intra-day. The brokerages networks, software, and computer systems simply weren't as sophisticated back then and didn't necessarily run in real-time.

I personally know someone who accidentally ended up owning an IPO stock with over 10:1 margin one day using Datek. He simply sent in a whole bunch of market orders in a row through their website (Datek's sysem was slow that day and he thought they weren't recieving his market orders since he wasn't getting confirmations). He got his confirmations a half hour later and lucky for him the stock was significantly above his buying price so he quadrupled his account when he sold the stock.
 
This is an old message from back in 2006 that I just saw, and it reminds me of how crazy those markets in the 1990s and early 2000s were. Those were fun times, about as pure as capitalism and speculation gets.

It also reinforces my belief that most people posting on ET don't have any clue about trading for big sums, and have the attitude that if I can't do it, or if I wouldn't have done it, or if it seems like too much money, then it must be a lie.

I have first hand experience with the brokerage firms back then, their intraday risk management was amateurish at best, and they had no idea how much money was at risk in some of their accounts. You could short with 2 to 1 margin on even the most crazy stocks, many of them moving 50-100% in a day. They would let your account go to the brink of complete obliteration and not know about it until the end of the day, or even until a margin call was issued the next day.

I have very little doubt about the truth of the original post. The post is over 8 years old, but it would be interesting to see if he did find a new strategy in the market to make big returns.
 
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