True Legendary Trading Stories

I took the summer off from trading to work in Montauk NY.

One day my uncle(who is already very wealthy) and I are talking stock and he says to me "see GLW?" I said "no...haven't looked at any quotes in a month" he says "its under 2 bucks...theres no way that company should be trading here...I bought a block".

Since his boat is worth more than most peoples net worth I assume he bought at least 10-20k..."just to play around" as he likes to say.

incidentally he was also long GLW @ 70 and sold it at 100...unreal timing for someone who couldn't really care less about the outcome...maybe thats the "holy grail"!!!
 

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"What can we learn? Never cut your losses?"

I only told the story not what I learned from it. I certainly don't want anyone to read that story and say they should not cut their losses. I made a couple of mistakes on that trade.

First I should have waited for a pullback within the up trend I was playing to enter the trade. That alone would have made a huge difference in the outcome.

Second I should not have bet my whole wad on a single trade which as it moved against me 5 days in a row led to the tremendous stress which led to my decision to exit one trading day too soon.
 
Quote from TL Trader:

"What can we learn? Never cut your losses?"

I only told the story not what I learned from it. I certainly don't want anyone to read that story and say they should not cut their losses. I made a couple of mistakes on that trade.

First I should have waited for a pullback within the up trend I was playing to enter the trade. That alone would have made a huge difference in the outcome.

Second I should not have bet my whole wad on a single trade which as it moved against me 5 days in a row led to the tremendous stress which led to my decision to exit one trading day too soon.
More...

OK, it was just a joke.
 
Yup, that's what the promo said. So, I subscribed (wouldn't give the details until signed up). Here's the deal.

Don't remember the guy's name, but his play:
1. Divide capital by 5
2. Wait until market oversold or overbought, then start fading on a scale-in.
3. Set wide stop... such that "market has never moved that far before".

In '85 or '86, as I recall, market got overbought and he started scaling into SP Futures... and in... and in.

Long story short, he got 5 positions short... AND was stopped out by broker. (Check the charts if you got 'em.)

Perspective... if $100,000 represented the sum of 20 years gains in client accounts before the fateful play, they lost all of that plus a $75,000 margin call deficit!!

I didn't get schooled on that one (didn't have that kind of moolah), but I saw it play out real time. Investors were furious. CFTC had to look into it. Was written up in Futures Magazine, too.
 
Quote from Mecro:

I'm right there with you man. Still kicking myself in the ass for not dropping out to trade and make easy millions. So much for the concept of hard work and discipline, what a scam.
Shiiiiittt, I actually have to use skills to make a few hundred a day now yet I could have used nothing but balls to make thousands a day a few years ago.
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You can still make them, I suppose. Look at ABIX yesterday:
+ 214 %
 
i attached a compilation of stop loss horror stories.. true mesmerizing stories of traders who didn't keep their stops and what happened later.. both fascinating and very educational.. didn't we all at one time or another...
 

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Quote from Mecro:

I'm right there with you man. Still kicking myself in the ass for not dropping out to trade and make easy millions. So much for the concept of hard work and discipline, what a scam.
Shiiiiittt, I actually have to use skills to make a few hundred a day now yet I could have used nothing but balls to make thousands a day a few years ago.
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Mecro, I agree there were some really awful traders who made millions during the bubble. However, everything worked itself out because most of them lost it all back when the bubble burst.

I also want to point out that there was never EASY money...just much more opportunity.

Take a look at TASR and IPIX. They move like many stocks did back in the bubble. Do they look like "easy millions"?
 
I richest trader that I know made all of his money when he went short in the summer of 1985, he bought calls to hedge himself. He had a synthetic put on the market. As you know the market kept on rallying.

He was short from 1985 to 1987, and nobody could shake him out of his short...

He had $5M in a B/D and he just kept on shorting stocks and buying calls for 2 years.

When we crashed, he was worth over $30 Million in 2 days. That is an awesome story, and it shows that his discipline paid off big time.
 
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