What is the worst one day loss you ever had?

Quote from yoohoo:

A little over $50,000 in 1988, when my broker misheard my order. He and assumed I said F in the ticker symbol when I said S. It was a 2 day trade and when I called next to sell to cover he wanted to know why. I said because I've made a profit. He said, huh? It shows a loss. Then the fur hit the fan. In those days there wasn't a lot of charting software and what there was cost a fortune. I had a Knight Ridder Tradestation that had just hit the market. He had a Reuters terminal with price only. So I'm looking at this chart thinking his Reuters is crap. He's looking at red figures thinking these new charts are not all they're cracked up to be. Then next day he listened to the tape of my order and discovered he had misheard me. He owned up immediately. Was in his office a few days later and he looked awful. It was November and this had cost him his bonus and it looked like his job was on the line too. I was in a good mood, and the money wasn't mine as I was managing a fund. At the time it still felt bad as I expected a profit and suddenly it was a loss. Such confusion hurts. Anyway, I told him to book the trade to me and it saved his job. It was only a small blip on the fund. At X'mas I couldn't carry the cases of wine the office bought me. All's well that ends well. The clients had a good run and the blip was insignificant, and I worked well with the guy so I wanted to preserve the relationship. There's more to life than $$$
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Really nice story and sentiment. Thanks for sharing that. :)
 
The thing is that a lot of traders don't really realize the extremes of the risks they are taking on. Risks like the kind that Mark Cook ended up discovering.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1116566&highlight=Mark+Cook#post1116566
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1116567&highlight=Mark+Cook#post1116567
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1116576&highlight=Mark+Cook#post1116576
They're not thinking about those kinds of risks. I learned about this directly myself on July 5, 2001 trading a seemingly safe position in equities and I think that until you learn it directly you may not be paying it enough attention. I was trading EMC and still had 1500 shares right after the closing bell at around $30/share. Was down about $300 as it dropped about 20 cents in the last couple of minutes and thought I'd hold it for a possible bump in the after market and get my money back. What happened instead was they issued an earnings warning, trading was halted for 1 1/2 hr. and when it resumed I was out $10,000, about 15% of my account. Obviously didn't feel very good. And it certainly could have been much much worse.
If you're putting on a position without being aware that this type of thing could happen or what happened to Mark could happen, then you're living in fantasy land and you're playing Russian Roulette. Here's a book on some well known traders and their biggest losses. It has some good stories but some aren't that great. I bought this a few years ago as this is a topic I was interested in. It's called When Supertraders Meet Kryptonie http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/09...4490/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0778286-2754410?ie=UTF8
Here's Jack's book Stock Market Wizards http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0066620597
 
Eurodollars closed on black Monday, October 19th, 1987 at 90.64 close to their contract lows of 90.15 which had been set two days prior and had been tested earlier that morning with a low at 90.18. I was short 1,200 contracts of December Eurodollars and another 600 T Bills. I also had significant long positions in Gold, Silver, and large positions in a few currencies.

The next morning they opened up at 92.85 which was more than 2 full points higher and about $5,500 per contract without any opportunity to exit. This was a price we hadn't seen in 8 months. Additionally, Gold opened down $25 and Silver opened down over a $1.

All totalled I was down about $11 million on the $20 million account I traded for Richard Dennis overnight. This was essentially my entire years profits which vanished overnight. My cut of the profits was 30% at that point so my personal loss was about $3.3 million.

It was kind of amusing. The day of the crash I made a bit of money. It was the government freaking out and lowering interest rates overnight with no warning that killed me.

- Curtis
 
6K in 30 seconds. 5% of my account.

I held through the Fed meeting. Never again, It was the first and last time I do that.

I had already booked some nice profits on a swing trade in the er2, so I figured I would hold since I had a nice cushion built in already.

I added to my position after the meeting because it was going my way, and then the market dropped 12 points in 30 seconds.

I didn't know what hit me it happened so fast.

Ironically 2 days later I had my biggest day ever and banked 7,500 on probbablly the best and most well managed trade of my life.

I caught a nice trend move and kept adding all the way down. By the close I was up 3,500 and held half my position over nite. The next day the market opened up down 10 points and I exited my short in pieces throught the morning.
 
I just lost 2K today which is alot for my $10,000 account. I had NSS short and this morning it gapped up like 40% on news of a buyout.

It sucks, partly because of the money, but also because I can't imagine what I could have done to avoid this.
 
Quote from inflector:

Eurodollars closed on black Monday, October 19th, 1987 at 90.64 close to their contract lows of 90.15 which had been set two days prior and had been tested earlier that morning with a low at 90.18. I was short 1,200 contracts of December Eurodollars and another 600 T Bills. I also had significant long positions in Gold, Silver, and large positions in a few currencies.

The next morning they opened up at 92.85 which was more than 2 full points higher and about $5,500 per contract without any opportunity to exit. This was a price we hadn't seen in 8 months. Additionally, Gold opened down $25 and Silver opened down over a $1.

All totaled I was down about $11 million on the $20 million account I traded for Richard Dennis overnight. This was essentially my entire years profits which vanished overnight. My cut of the profits was 30% at that point so my personal loss was about $3.3 million.

It was kind of amusing. The day of the crash I made a bit of money. It was the government freaking out and lowering interest rates overnight with no warning that killed me.

- Curtis
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Weirdly that was my biggest winning day ever. I was in the Bond pit and got stuck long as the market broke early on Monday. I added (I think I was long 70 contracts) and just piecemealed out all day and took 20 home. Even though I was easily margined my clearing firm had huge problems on Tuesday and asked me to get flat ASAP. Bond futures were limit up so I had to cover in the options pit by doing a synthetic and even though I made around 100k(plus 60k the day before) I left another 100 on the table by getting out so hastily. I really felt for RD (who I knew was short). You guys certainly had a good trade on but as trend followers you had to see it through. I bet more often then not you prospered by holding tight. Just not THAT particular time.......
 
Quote from nothingtheory:

I just lost 2K today which is alot for my $10,000 account. I had NSS short and this morning it gapped up like 40% on news of a buyout.

It sucks, partly because of the money, but also because I can't imagine what I could have done to avoid this.
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Sorry about your loss. :( That sucks. Similar to my $10k loss on my EMC trade but on the other side of the market. Fortunately at the time of my loss I wasn't holding a larger position. Like you say, and we're saying, sometimes there's really not much or not anything at all you can do. Your trade is also similar to Mark Cook's. Sorry that went against you.
 
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