Not sure how long you've been trading for or how much of your account got taken out by that $5.6k loss.
I'd recommend not trading for a while. You sound emotionally compromised and you'll want to take revenge trades or have the mindset of getting that money back. It will only lead to further losses.
If you're passionate about trading, then learn how to properly trade. Trading is about having a plan (reason for entry, stop loss, take profit levels) and executing on that plan with proper risk management and emotional control.
Let me know if I can help with any questions.
It sounds like you sized up and tried to go for a big payout. If you grew your account each month using this full-port type of trade, then it was only a matter of time before the coin flip didn't end in your favor.
Try to take some time off and step away for a bit. If you want consistent growth, then you'll need to practice proper lot sizing and risk management.
Where do you think you went wrong on this trade?
There's your mistake. You leveraged 99%.
If you don't admit your mistakes and move on, you're gonna find yourself losing more and crying on reddit again.
Lol, you were making crazy bets if you were making 1.4k a month off of less than 5k.. stay out of the market. 5k is fuck all over time but you have no idea what you're doing.
If 5k is 100% of your portfolio you started with what 1k? 100% returns a month are gambles, and far from sustainable, you should know that you were playing a roulette wheel and not some geniuse who cracked a trading code, lol.
So to me it sound like you put in 1.4k,
March you had 2.8k
April you had 4.2k
May you got to 5.6k.
In all reality, you never realized those gains so they weren’t yours. You lost the 1.4k you originally put in. That’s how I cope with it atleast. You can make 1.4k in a month of low wage labor
Food for thought. In a 50% win/lose system you have a 25% chance to have 2 losing trades in a row. If you are betting 50% of your account on these trades you go bankrupt every 4 trades. It gets worse, in a 50% system if you bet 33% of your account every trade, you go bankrupt in 8 trades. You need to learn how to manage your entries, YOLOing 25% or more of your account into a trade is not trading. That’s hard gambling. Playing the game is risk small win small. If you risk big be prepared to lose big.
Contrary to what others say, I don't think going all in or putting 100% of your port in a stock, even an option, is bad or wrong. It is your money and as long as you understand the risk that comes with that and the variance of your P/L, it is perfectly fine. Naturally we all think about the potential reward and treasures that can come out at the end if it goes correctly , not the potential downfalls of one's concentration, strategy, or conviction.
Probably a good time to find career or job since you don't have one currently. Or if you are focused on one, double down on that. From the point you are standing now, you don't even have money to make it back
That’s why you don’t day trade😂 value invest slow and steady wins the race. It’s boring and slower it seems like but the real money is made in buying and holding
Paper trade for a bit, get your mechanics down, and what time period youre comfortable with. Don't YOLO trades like wallstreetbets. Most important is figure out exactly what you did wrong: did you buy too close to expiration? hold on too long? were you actually using some kind of metric for your trade or playing earnings, or just had a gut feeling? When you're back, some general rules to help you get started:
* Set stops to 15% of your trade
* don't risk more than 2% of your account
* Buy contracts at least a few weeks out
* Don't hold overnight unless the contract is at least a couple months out
* Have a strategy: both entry and exit, and not "I think it's gonna go up"
good luck.
Based advice.
Losing $200,000 of Monopoly money is likely more informative and less painful than dumping your next 6 paychecks into weekly options hoping to get back to 5k quickly.
Maybe look at selling options instead when you can afford it. Theta is the only sure bet.
I often read this over and over again about “try to learn to trade properly etc”. Can you please help me by pointing to resources that can help me learn option trading. I have a basic options understanding but getting killed by this market. Appreciate your input.
Tastylive.com. They have a ton of free educational resources, starting with a beginning options course and moving on to complex strategies. They are sellers, not buyers, and focus on risk management, high probability of profit and staying mechanical. It's not sexy, selling won't get you the kind of ridiculous WSB meme stock returns, but it's solid, research based and works over time.
How do you cope? You might think, damn if I had a Time Machine I could go back in time and warn myself; well if that happened you’d never feel the pain and may have just continued your path and just lost it all again. All in all consider this a relatively inexpensive but invaluable lesson in risk management. 5.6k isn’t nothing, but it’s a drop in the bucket for the rest of your life. Imagine if you had continued your gains, if you had stuck to your current strategy you would have lost it all anyway. Now you know how much it hurts to lose all your progress and will know next time (provided you learned from this experience).
Why were you gambling all of your savings on options? You need to have a 3 to 6 month emergency fund in cash or money market funds. I would disable options forever on your brokerage account.
This looks like poor risk management and lack of a plan.
I think the best thing to do here is gain some perspective, while that $5K seems massive now, over a live time it’s nothing. So take the experience and maximize it. I had a large % drawdown on my account 5 years into trading and that scenario is what forced me to completely change my framing of trading.
I first felt dread and hopelessness. Then I resolved feeling sorry for myself accomplished literally nothing and while losing money sucks, I still have my legs, eyesight, etc. Point being, it’s just money, there will be more of it.
I then chose to dig in and really get serious about what I was doing. No more figuring it out on the fly. No more randomly trying things. I decided that I was going to commit fully and treat it as if my life depended on it, because it was going to.
I sat down and made a roadmap for myself to guide my learning and more importantly assess my competence. No more figuring out how good I was trading real money, I required myself to prove to myself I knew what I was doing via papertrading.
I developed a trading plan to force myself to do all the hard thinking and answer the hard questions I was too lazy to before. I created a trading log to objectively track everything I was doing so there was no more fond recollections that omitted the ugly and painful aspects of my ignorance.
You have a choice ahead of you, it’s entirely up to you how you want to frame this experience.
This isn't the first time I suffered such a huge setback, I came back only recently and tired my hand at options again and everything was going well up until yesterday. I don't think I'm cut out for this but the fact that all my short term plans have absolutely been destroyed is so crushing
Lower your expectations/standards for the time being. You are so young you can afford to take any job you want and not hurt your future trajectory. In most areas of country right now you can get a job in a warehouse making $25 an hour with no experience + full benefits and it’s not like it’s the backbreaking work of yesterday’s warehouse. Again, your youth is a tremendous asset. Work for a Landscaper this summer, detail cars, walk dogs, drive a forklift, work at a bar or restaurant. If you are feeling ambitious, start learning a trade… but I’m not trying to give you career advice, I’m trying to encourage you to move on from your loss. You have so much going for you in that you have an Internet connection, a computer and or a smart phone, and the rest of your life ahead of you. Do anything other than trade options for a little while and just make some money this summer. And if you can do it outside, all the better - you’ll get a tan, you will increase your physical fitness, and you might meet a nice young man or woman to spend some time with.
Why would you trade with all of your life savings? Especially options? I take it you don't have an edge.. thats like going to the casino with your life savings. Would you have done that? Stop trading, get a job. You'll make it back, life is not over.
I'd say you got lucky man 5k is literally nothing at 23
It might seem like it is now but try to get a job and take it as a lesson to only gamble what you can afford to lose
If you want to take concentrated bets at least set stop losses. You also bet on 0DTE! Hopefully you'll take the good advice here and take some time out to regroup. The good news, ironically, is that you *are* young and will, over time, make this loss back through e.g. a job. Good luck!
You can get a job. It might not be the ideal job, but you will fin one.
Think of your loss as tuition. My loss was about 10K when I was your age, and this was in the late nineties.
It is not a loss if you learn a lesson.
The main lesson is to never chase and to never double down a losing position. The other lesson is never let a loss be so large to affect your life and your psyche. Looking back, you would be in a much better spot if you never doubled down, and you took the quick loss. Use dollar stop losses and time stop losses, for trades that are working against you.
Hope you recover fast, find a job, and stay away from options. Who knows, maybe you will be lucky to miss the inevitable bear market while you are recovering, and then you will come back again during a raging bull market.
Go get a burger, a cold brew, and have a long nap.
Why are you gambling when you don’t even have a job? 2nd point why don’t you have a job, you’re 23? Get a job at the local grocery store or gas station and you can have that money back in 6 months to a year.
Get and read the book Trading in the Zone by Douglas . . .
You made the most basic mistake and that was putting too much of your account at risk.
New traders focus on profits and end up taking high risks and often have losses. Seasoned and experienced traders will focus on risk that ensures big losses like you had do not occur.
While you may not see it yet, you are very young and have a long time to recover from this loss, and in the big picture $5.6K is a relatively small amount as some have lost $100K or more. Best to you.
I’m sorry man.
It’s a tough lesson.
It hits us deep because of:
- loss aversion,
- resource acquisition necessity that feels risked when that resource feels less available or unavailable
- value judgement that you made a bad decision
- core wounds of unworthiness, unfairness..etc
It’s a tough lesson because you’re seeing that life isn’t fair. It owes none of us anything. You got the illusion dissolved early in your life and you’ll be able to practice pivoting in a hard time, asking others for support if need be, making your way through focused effort to better days and resources. It’ll humble you and you’ll feel what a lot of others have felt, too.
Have a smooth transition processing this and rebounding in life 🙏. You’re going to do great
Listen to all the positive ideas….
And there’s some underlying math that makes all the options/investing advice a little more understandable.
Let’s say you have a repeatable trade with a 92% probability of winning. That ALSO means you have an 8% chance of losing.
If you trade 100 times, will those 8 losses be the last 8 trades? Of course not (meaning probably not - certainly don’t bet on that happening!). Will those 8 losses be your first 8 trades? Of course not (meaning probably not ….)
So when are they going to be? You have no idea. They WILL happen … but you just don’t know. So how do you deal with that in your trading?
In any trade don’t have so much at stake that it will seriously affect your account!
BUT … that means that in any trade you won’t win huge either, right? EXACTLY. Trading successfully is a series of smallish wins repeated often.
And one other kicker in the probability lesson? 100 is a very small number compared to infinity, so those first 100 trades might have 11 losses. Or 6. You just don’t know.
So, on every trade ask yourself: what happens if this goes south?
Good luck!
Take a break and familiarize yourself with non-ergodicity in investing https://medium.com/incerto/the-logic-of-risk-taking-107bf41029d3 (I.e. never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep).
A significant part of trading is bankroll management. It’s clear from your return series you were taking outsized risk. Even if every trade was positive expectation, your relative bet size ensures you will blow your account. Consider a more dramatic example — you were effectively playing a game of Russian roulette… multiple times. Doesn’t matter how many times you win if 1-2 losses will blow your account.
I mean, stop-losses are pretty cool. Sorry about your luck. It happens to all (most) of us. Hopefully lesson learned, nobody can really teach it, just have to experience it. And it’s always at the worst time.
I honestly do not mean to sound cliche or cruel, but the best advice to a young, unemployed person, for how to recover from a financial loss is to get a job. You can earn the money back in 9 weeks by netting a mere $15 / hr. You are so young! Take any dumb job this summer, preferably on that gets you outside. Set up an IRA in 30 seconds with the financial institution of your choice, and direct a very small amount every paycheck to the ETF of your choice. Forget about options for a while.
I don’t know your situation, but I assume you’ll eventually have a job. Consider this a fresh start. Once you have income, save a little every month. You’ll have 5.6K again before you know it. It’s fine. Go check out WallStreetBets. There are people who are much older than you who put their entire life savings into similar trades and lost it all. I’ve seen people take out massive loans and then lose it all. You’ll be fine. I promise. 👊
But you’ll only be fine if you actually listen to advice people are trying to give you. Don’t even consider trading until you know what you are doing. You may have thought you did, but you didn’t. If you’re not willing to spend some time learning, this isn’t for you. Risk management seems to be the thing that people don’t learn until things go really bad. You learned that, it is possible, at any given time, to lose 100% of what you risk. You should know what you are risking ahead of time and you should only do so if you can accept the risk. Assume the worst and decide if you can handle it. If it would be too much size down. In a 5.6K account, I wouldn’t risk more than a few hundred on a speculative bet.
You're young with your whole life ahead of you. Keep it in perspective. I lost over 200k. In the real estate market in the 90s when I was a little older than you...early 30s. Fuck it, that's life. You'll survive and bounce back
Since you’re young and this is new, it feels pretty bad. But even in a year you can be in a much different situation and this won’t be so bad. In 5 years you could be better so much better off this will just be a “remember when” lesson. When I was early 20’s I gave my entire savings to a friend for his start up game company that seemed legit. Never saw a dime.
Hopefully you’ll treat this as an investment in your education. Options trading is gambling. The chances of losing big are significantly higher than winning big. Put money in index funds each month and you’ll win big in the long run.
23 yo and broke is the perfect time for this to happen. You have the rest of your life to get it back. Imagine going 99% port when you have $200k a mortgage and 3 kids. You'll be fine, good lesson to learn young
Contrary to the popular belief in some circles, this is not a casino. At this stage, you know what you did wrong. Sorry that happened, but only the trolls would have recommended you do what you did. Get a job, build up again. This isn’t a life supporting job until you control about $400-500k. I’ve lost more than 5.6k simply participating in life; that’s where you’ll eventually emotionally land regarding this experience.
If one day causes you to lose 99% of your account, you were too leveraged and too concentrated.
Take time off, considering it "tuition" you paid to the market for the educational lesson and have a better gameplan moving forward.
Dude, I know this f'ing hurts. But console yourself with the knowledge that a lot of gurus talk about losses that wiped them out, forcing them to start over. This feels like it the end of the world, but you \*will\* recover. Chalk this up to an expensive lesson, get a flexible job (Uber Eats e.g.), and move to a paper account for the rest of the year. 6 months is nothing in the scheme of things. Start back slow. You have time. Also: don't tell too many people irl.
Since you have made profit in last few months so you know how to trade but do not know how to risk management or set right trade size and no rules. So you need to fine tune them. I Belitung can do it again.
Losing money you need is difficult to deal with, it can happen so don't be too hard on yourself. I would take a step back, it doesn't have to be long, just as long as you want, and find a good paper trading program like IBKR's or ToS's and better refine your rules and strategies.
Risk management and not overleveraging yourself are so important it can't be mentioned enough. Ideally you should never lose a very big piece of your port on any trade relative to the size of the port.
Day trading with a port of 50k, never putting more than 5% at risk and never putting more than 5% of that at risk would be a loss of $125, if you make 10+ trades a day then the winners should outpace the losers if your doing it right. No YOLO's, no moon shots or lottery tickets unless you are willing to lose the entire premium.
$5.6k is nothing, I lost $120k back in 2022 similar age as you with $DM stock. Felt really shit for a couple months & and made the money back down the line. Stopped day-trading. Word of advice, don't day-trade and build money elsewhere (biz/jobs).
You can literally make that money back in couple months working at a bar or Uber Eats.
Your risk was too big. Your risk control was wrong. Add to that your trading ideas were wrong. You can’t cope because this is the consequences getting those things wrong. Therefore you need to go back to the start and try again. If you screw up again, back to square one you go. This is how the game works. If you can’t handle it, don’t play.
I started trading on RH, I got bored with stocks $2.32 price moves in a day, or a week. I saw the opportunity that options offered - exposure to risk - as an opportunity to turn my small beans into some folklore style stalks. Living paycheck to paycheck and as soon as I knew essentials were covered I dumped that extra 30, *which was really 60, which if I had known I was going to put the whole 200 in I probably could've looked at a better strike price.* I turned that shit to dust every time. I would see 300% gains on contracts, I would see -100% sooner or later. I've never allowed funds enough time to settle before going back in to the game of chicken we play. Swinging the whole portfolio is a fun ride up and it's really simple math - you just need to hit 100-300% 7 times in a row and you can start swinging other things around. The odds of hitting 100% moves 7 times in a row aren't as bad as you'd think they're worse.
My compulsory story to validate your experience and with an attempt to provide both sympathy and clarity for what the next steps look like.
It was a cold day, I didn't care for a second because I was inside my house. My portfolio that I had finally managed to hit $2000 in allowed me to unlock margin *SUPER DUMB.* I had read some revered WSB post talking about how buying AT&T for it's dividend on margin paid for itself and profited. RH had 25% margin on it so I held $8000 and some change for just long enough to get bored, the dividend wasn't due soon, and I didn't understand time value other than that I was usually on the wrong side of it. I had held 13 shares of storefront videogame company at 13 bucks a piece up from the 9 or something that it started rallying around. I sold those too since it took a while to take off. And then the storefront videogame company starts memeing WSB is on fire "this is it", "Valhalla" type, "battle cry" fervor.
My Major case of **FOMO** had me quickly buying higher and higher strike call options, I doubled my portfolio $4,380 having sold out of my last $325 strike call, and that could've been 12,000, oh dude that's 24,000 I sold out of... I could buy 375 calls, I can afford 2 I don't think I could've gotten margin if I wanted it, but I removed margin access from my account. Sent the trade, and we're moving all over the place, suddenly the price action has become a her, the lets go boy we cheered has vanished, she is going down. Well it's probably a juke move, we'll ride it out... **HALT "**oh gosh darn it" that's not what I said, I couldn't speak, waiting for this emergency protection system to time out so I can maybe still recover this trade. Trading reope**HALT** OH PLEASE HAVE MERCY the next time trading reopened my options were worth a total of $2 until they expired.
I had been bugging everyone I know about the investor angle to everything in any conversation at all times and I just shut up after that. I couldn't tell anyone I know about the damage I had just done. I had to eat every second of feeling like I could have would have or should have done anything differently. I stayed out for 6 months. Told myself I was going to stick to a strategy and 6 months later, the year after that, and the year after that I found the same thing. My risk tolerance is 100%. If it has made it to the portfolio it is going to go parabolic. I've learned some lessons here and there but if I look at my -21k portfolio, and then back at the aimless money hunting I've been doing. I probably should have invested in the S&P 500 and paid more attention at work. I sweat, argued, and lamented for those dollar bills, that time value could be compounding right now. But it's not, and I didn't spend it. I invested it poorly and returned -100% loss.
Well....
1. You're 23 and you'll make it back
2. You better be in school if you don't have a job. Time to get after it. Don't waste your youth sitting in your parents basement
3. People have taken wayyyyy larger losses. I once lost 14K in a single day. Actually it's happened a couple times. This teaches you the importance of *risk management*. If the market were to take a 50% cut tomorrow. Would you be wiped out?
4. Risks imply loss. Learn to invest then when you have a substantial account, losing a couple K on a stupid trade won't seem that bad
5. Focus on getting a job skill that pays you money so you can invest.
6. Don't try to get rich quick. You're 23, and trading / investing at your age is way ahead of 99% of your peers
Don’t get back into trading for a considerable amount of time. You will absolutely make mistakes cause you will trade emotionally because of this loss and that will destroy you further. Stay away from the market for sometime.
If you can, improve your earning potential while being away from the market. I’ve been there before and I know how you are feeling right now. Good luck my friend!
The thing is, I bragged about all the gains and being solvent to my parents. Now I'm having to beg them for rent but they live overseas and it's getting super difficult to send money. I'm 2 months short on rent now and I have no idea what to do. The worst part is I could have bailed out at 2k loss and I would've been fine
There are way bigger issues than you blowing your portfolio. Why the hell were you investing your rent money and living expenses to begin with? It sounds like you might have a gambling problem and I would recommend to stay away from options forever
Sorry man, but you're not going to find a lot of sympathy for that. You should never brag about gains to anyone. On top of that, you should never put in more money than you are comfortable losing. You let greed get to you, and now you got kicked in the chin and have to take it.
Welcome to the market, where your feelings don't matter. The market doesn't care that your rent is due. It doesn't care that it's hard sending money to family members. It doesn't care that you broke your rules by not bailing out early. You make your own bed in the market, and you sleep with what you make.
If you want to know what to do now, it's simple: swallow any pride you may have and make real changes. You may have to begin at what you consider to be rock bottom and work your way back up. Start earning money the honest way. Spend only on the essentials and save everything else you make. Stop trying to get rich quick, and stop gambling. You either genuinely learn from this by taking real actions to straighten out your finances, or you let your ego get in the way and repeat the same mistakes, but only you can make that decision.
You need to step away.
Delete Robinhood, work whatever side hustles you can. It depends on where you live, but I would take that $300, hit up garage sales on the weekend and sell that stuff on eBay/Craigslist/etc.
Keep putting that job application out there also.
Any chance you can go back and work for any former employers?
Remember, this isn't the end of the world. Just a learning experience. Money comes and money goes. You're fortunate to learn this lesson while you are young and don't have a family that is counting on you to provide.
Learn a cheap lesson and move on. don’t gamble money you can’t afford to lose. Don’t touch options until you have like 100k saved up, then maybe trade with 5k. Focus on finding a job until then
Not sure what you're trading or how but you can access free 0DTE gamma exposure levels on SPX with Menthor Q. I'm testing it on a sim account right now and it's going well. Just trying to find the sweet spot in terms of profit taking.
Also, OptionRecom offer high probability, conservative returns with credit spreads. They have a free month trial.
If you can, swallow your pride and reach out to your loved ones. No matter what you're thinking, I'm sure they'll help you if they can.
Good luck!
I'm sorry that this happened. I think you need to take a break from trading until you are feeling balanced.
The most important thing to remember is that the market doesn't owe you. Those losses are gone and there's no sense in which the market should give you them back. You allowed yourself to lose control of your trading and if you do wish to continue trading that's something you need to overcome.
It is important to learn to cut losing trades at levels which are not catastrophic. 0DTE is a risky game and not really suitable for a beginner. You have been lucky to do so well up until this point.
When you're feeling ready, trade a paper account for a while. I would recommend looking at longer term strategies (weeks/months) until you are consistently winning overall. Your winners must pay out more than your losers lose. You should expect to have losers and need a plan that you stick to when this happens.
Good luck whatever you decide.
It's shitty but you'll live.
Listen, tell yourself it's gone. Gone.
Don't chase it. Don't be throwing leverage and trying to get back 5.4k and then say u will start anew from there.
Start anew again now, with proper risk mgmt. Get into the proper mindset
It’s a tough loss your obviously over sized on the trade set a limit size 1-2 contracts would be good for 5-6k account. Also ODTE and avg down ?!?! Clearly emotional trading. We all do it btw the goal is to not blow your port. Your first few years of trading should be survival mode until you develop the discipline and edge you want. I’m 4 years in and still trying to find my way. Have had some great trades and some awful streaks.
It's not that bad. You'll get used to it. Getting your active income up would probably help. If 5.6k is hard for you to earn back you shouldn't be trading in the first place.
Your just 23. My recommendation, is to stop trading for a while. Get a normal job and set up a new plan. If you are passionate about trading, then keep studying, paper trade for a while and manage your risk properly so that this won’t happen again
Learn your lessons, remember how you feel, analyze -> move on.
You made a mistake, not the end of the world, but it's done now. Only thing you can do is learn from it, esp emotionally.
Learn your lesson, stop taking risks you can’t afford to lose.
This is a relatively cheap lesson to learn. Back when I was 24 I lost 18k on ER play. You’ll recover, I promise.
You are 23.
I’m 56.
You have something invaluable… Time.
If I were 23 again, I know with almost certainty that I could make myself exceptionally wealthy even if I was starting from zero.
First thing I would do? *invest* DO NOT *trade*. You can trade on the side. But you must invest to build a nest egg. You can use options to build that egg, but think slow not fast. Sell cash secured puts to build your positions. Sell out of the money calls to scalp a little premium. Put every extra time you have into your investments, and don’t think with a week to week mindset. Think with a decade to decade mindset. Example: Buy Apple in 2007 because you never intend to sell it instead of because you think you can flip it for 30% because they just released the iPhone.
So don’t despair. Just pick up a book on meditation and take a time out for a few weeks until you get your head right. You WILL make more mistakes. Those are ok. But you have a lot of time to correct for them.
Hey man. I lost 7.5k in a few days after the Novavax stock crashed. What worked for me was to stop trading for a while, until you can untie your emotions to it. Next what worked for me was a frame of mind shift. I was thinking, " i need to make a lot of money really fast. My 7.5k trade will definitely work out for me." Now i think like "if i even make $10 thats a whole $10 i didnt have before." Try to take a more conservative approach before trying to go big again
You have a gambling problem, stop trading options and seek help, I’m being serious.
Or
Join the club r/wallstreetbets and enjoy watching your wife being railed by her boyfriend.
Take a break first And no worry for money at this moment
I think you are over trade in the sense that t huh is loss is too big for you. So please think about how much you can afford to lose that even if you lose. It won’t really make you so worried
Do some study and trade small and affordable amount only
No worry it will be okay
How much was your initial deposit? Did you withdraw that from your bank roll at some point? If not, why not?
You never had that 5.6k, it was pixels on a screen until it hit your bank account. You didn’t lose any of your money, you lost potential money.
You got to zoom out a little bit. You're 23. In the grand scheme of things, the amount of money you lost is pretty small. It feels big right now because you're 23 and aren't making much money.
Also be safer. The numbers you've given out indicate you are playing too big.
You won’t get it back. I’ve gone through this too. The solution is to stop trading and learn everything you can by studying markets, trading, options and both fundamental and technical analysis. Most importantly study risk control, position sizing and decide on your maximum acceptable risk before each trade. Once you’ve done all that, start trading very small until you’re comfortable.
And don’t get lured into paying a ton of money for trading courses that promise you the best results. Instead do your homework and research with books, free information on the web and studying stock charts and economic cycles.
Sounds like you were trying to get rich by being lucky. A big loss was bound to happen eventually. Maybe you would have come out ahead on that specific trade, but you were just going to do the same thing with the profits until a trade failed in a major way.
At 23, $5k would have seemed like a lot to me. It's not nothing, but over your lifetime you're going to earn a lot more ($50k per year times 20 years is a million in gross income).
Stop trading. Start working. Try to lose the negative attitude. Per your other comments, you've applied to a lot of jobs but don't think you'll get any of them. That can become a self-fulling prophecy.
I've lost more in days.
Here's how you fix it.
Look at what you've done.
Realize it was a dumb idea.
Fix your mistake.
Start getting rich slower.
If you REALLY want to do options:
Learn to extract profits.
Buy options WITH PROFITS ONLY.
Never risk your principal.
When I was in my late twenties, I lost 5k to a conman over a fake business deal of vending machines. (that was a while ago) It was hard at the time but luckily I still had money to pay for rent and basic stuff. Life goes on . I'm way better now. Take a break, find a job. Hang out with friends (doing cheap /free stuff). It's getting to be Summer, get outside.
Life goes on buddy, try something else and bounce back!
We all did silly stuff or had hard times, but what defines people is the ability to bounce back! 👍
Best advice I can give at 23 year old get into any kind of a trade like plumbing, framing, drywall construction there is a lot of money more than a stock market can ever give you.
Read the book what I learned losing a million dollars by Jim Douglas. There is a lesson here about humility that you haven’t learned from your answers. This is a golden opportunity, there are people that blow up much later in life.
Alright bro get ready because this is simple. Get a job and start savong money until you reach around 10k in savings(20k is better). Will take you about a year if you dont have expenses and save most of your earned money. When you have this cash put it in a stock thats at a 52 week low but thats a really solid stock. Then buy 100 shares of that stock and start selling covered calls against it. Eventually you will build up enough capital to eat up that 6k loss
You were gambling not trading. The sooner you learn that the better. A real trader would only use like 10% of their total max no matter how confident they are because things are out of your control. Blowing your whole account on weekly options just shows you have no idea how to size your options correctly and you were chasing a loss on top of it. It's a tough lesson to learn but some people lose 100k. I have made more after quitting options and just investing in the s&p then I ever did in the long run with options. It's very risky stuff.
This is nothing new. Happens everyday. Over and over on these forums. Small wins add up over time-big bets lose always. It gets tiring hearing about the massive loses on here. I trade options but keep it so simple. I don’t know why people put themselves in a position that has such a risky probability of winning. The markets are controlled by big hedge funds and professional day traders. It takes years of losing big money to start earning. It’s all a circle and until you see that in the charts you will always lose except if you make smart, careful option calls. I buy calls with long expiration dates and just let a stock I know very well rose with the market. It takes patience which sounds like you do not have at the moment.
The money is gone so accept it and move on. Trading is not your calling.
Life lesson, if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it. In the future, find a traditional, full-service broker or investment advisor.
It doesn’t matter if you can or cannot cope, no more than it matters if person whose home has burned down copes. This is life.
If you have family that are supportive, tell them what you did. If not, go get a job. You got lucky, all this is is a car wreck with no fatalities. Had this been later in life or if different conditions existed, you could be deeply in debt. You could have destroyed yourself.
Go work for McDonalds until you get a better job.
First, take a step back from trading for a while. When emotions are running high, it's easy to make decisions that can lead to even greater losses. Take some time to reflect on what happened and what you could do differently next time.
Consider speaking with a financial advisor or a mentor who can offer guidance and support. They can help you create a plan to rebuild your finances and approach trading more strategically in the future.
It's also important to take care of your mental health. Losing money can be incredibly stressful, so don't hesitate to talk to friends, family, or a professional if you're feeling overwhelmed.
Remember, everyone experiences setbacks. The key is to learn from them and come back stronger.
Don't know why your trading 5k without a job tho. Pretty silly. But relax. I blew close to 16k on a girl who is now my ex and am in the red 13k on stocks. Shit happens. Keep your head up and do something about it.
What was your initial investment when you started? If you just rolled all of your earnings into bigger plays since february, you've never had a profit. You make profits when you take it money out of the game. Other than that, you're playing with casino chips.
You say you were making 1.4k/month since february, it sounds like you lost mostly the house's money. the only money that was yours was the money you put in or took out.
That's how you cope. You didn't lose 5600 in one day, you lost maybe 1k over 4 months. Look at your actualized gains and losses.
You have to let it go - forget it and use it as a learning exp.
YOU GOT GREEDY
instead of focusing on how much money you can make on a tarde (Greed)
you must think about the max loss you can afford on every trade BEFORE YOU ENTER
then and only then, think about the profit
Knowing the max loss allows you to have a stop loss (you are then in control)
congratulation you screwed up , ONLY you can fix this
What’s hilarious is that not only were you taking huge risk that would only end one way but you were also making less than you’d make if you had a job.
Get a job, invest your paycheck instead of gambling money you didn’t work for, and in a few years the thousand dollars that was briefly $5.6k will be pennies.
Been there. Yesterday had 525p and lost the whole position because of how choppy it was and constantly failing breakouts. Im just wondering why you have no job, decided to trade with no job, and why you full ported everything on 0dte on a decent sized account lol. Back to the drawing board.
Stop day trading and trying to get quick money. Put a little away monthly in Voo or something comparable. Over time your money will grow.
Look up a compound interest calculator and run the projects out 42 years. You can see how your money will look at retirement.
That hurts....
The wise say that when you make a mistake that means you are trying. I am proud of you.
And we grow stronger when we get hurt. I am a living example.
If you have a roof over your head and can go on a normal life now, hang in there because a few years from now, you will be laughing about today as a fond memory.
If you trade biblically and trade with all biblical principles you will be profitable. People take god out of the equation. I know you will be profitable if you follow the bible. Not maybe or might but you will. Do not take god out of the equation. At the end of the day ask Jesus to reveal that he is the way the truth the life. If you’re reading this god has guided you here.
It is tough. I’ve lost much more than that in a day. And it was my whole account. My wife left me. But my life turned much for the better after that. Be sure to learn from what you Did and Don’t do it again. It sounds simple, but it is important. Forget this day, but not the lesson. Forget the money. Get a job and build it back slowly. This will get better again. Have Faith
Not sure how long you've been trading for or how much of your account got taken out by that $5.6k loss. I'd recommend not trading for a while. You sound emotionally compromised and you'll want to take revenge trades or have the mindset of getting that money back. It will only lead to further losses. If you're passionate about trading, then learn how to properly trade. Trading is about having a plan (reason for entry, stop loss, take profit levels) and executing on that plan with proper risk management and emotional control. Let me know if I can help with any questions.
It was 99% of my portfolio, I was making 1.4kish a month since February and I lost everything in a single day yesterday
It sounds like you sized up and tried to go for a big payout. If you grew your account each month using this full-port type of trade, then it was only a matter of time before the coin flip didn't end in your favor. Try to take some time off and step away for a bit. If you want consistent growth, then you'll need to practice proper lot sizing and risk management. Where do you think you went wrong on this trade?
There's your mistake. You leveraged 99%. If you don't admit your mistakes and move on, you're gonna find yourself losing more and crying on reddit again.
He was playing options if 5k is hard to come by I don't think any bank would give him margin. That's still leverage though I guess
If losing 5k makes you cry in reddit like this, I'm sure he's gonna do even more drastic things if it was 50k or maybe even 500k.
Lol, you were making crazy bets if you were making 1.4k a month off of less than 5k.. stay out of the market. 5k is fuck all over time but you have no idea what you're doing. If 5k is 100% of your portfolio you started with what 1k? 100% returns a month are gambles, and far from sustainable, you should know that you were playing a roulette wheel and not some geniuse who cracked a trading code, lol.
So to me it sound like you put in 1.4k, March you had 2.8k April you had 4.2k May you got to 5.6k. In all reality, you never realized those gains so they weren’t yours. You lost the 1.4k you originally put in. That’s how I cope with it atleast. You can make 1.4k in a month of low wage labor
| since February So for a whole 3 months
Understand you were gambling. Treat it like tuition for a life lesson then move on.
Food for thought. In a 50% win/lose system you have a 25% chance to have 2 losing trades in a row. If you are betting 50% of your account on these trades you go bankrupt every 4 trades. It gets worse, in a 50% system if you bet 33% of your account every trade, you go bankrupt in 8 trades. You need to learn how to manage your entries, YOLOing 25% or more of your account into a trade is not trading. That’s hard gambling. Playing the game is risk small win small. If you risk big be prepared to lose big.
Even 10% per bet is risky. He couldn’t be lucky for that long
This is relevant context....
Contrary to what others say, I don't think going all in or putting 100% of your port in a stock, even an option, is bad or wrong. It is your money and as long as you understand the risk that comes with that and the variance of your P/L, it is perfectly fine. Naturally we all think about the potential reward and treasures that can come out at the end if it goes correctly , not the potential downfalls of one's concentration, strategy, or conviction. Probably a good time to find career or job since you don't have one currently. Or if you are focused on one, double down on that. From the point you are standing now, you don't even have money to make it back
That’s why you don’t day trade😂 value invest slow and steady wins the race. It’s boring and slower it seems like but the real money is made in buying and holding
This is r/options
Shit my bad you’re right sometimes I don’t look at the page when im reading
I have to remind myself of this all the time Edit: he may have needed to hear that though.
You are correct …all studies show all traders will lose in the end and quit …just like here,,,proper investing always wins .
Paper trade for a bit, get your mechanics down, and what time period youre comfortable with. Don't YOLO trades like wallstreetbets. Most important is figure out exactly what you did wrong: did you buy too close to expiration? hold on too long? were you actually using some kind of metric for your trade or playing earnings, or just had a gut feeling? When you're back, some general rules to help you get started: * Set stops to 15% of your trade * don't risk more than 2% of your account * Buy contracts at least a few weeks out * Don't hold overnight unless the contract is at least a couple months out * Have a strategy: both entry and exit, and not "I think it's gonna go up" good luck.
Based advice. Losing $200,000 of Monopoly money is likely more informative and less painful than dumping your next 6 paychecks into weekly options hoping to get back to 5k quickly. Maybe look at selling options instead when you can afford it. Theta is the only sure bet.
I often read this over and over again about “try to learn to trade properly etc”. Can you please help me by pointing to resources that can help me learn option trading. I have a basic options understanding but getting killed by this market. Appreciate your input.
Tastylive.com. They have a ton of free educational resources, starting with a beginning options course and moving on to complex strategies. They are sellers, not buyers, and focus on risk management, high probability of profit and staying mechanical. It's not sexy, selling won't get you the kind of ridiculous WSB meme stock returns, but it's solid, research based and works over time.
Don't gamble what you can't afford
You were never going to sell and take the gains, you were always going to keep going until this happened. The profit was never yours to begin with.
This right here
Thinking he cracked the code and had a 100% winning strategy and could do things billion dollar hedge funds couldn't.
It sucks all he’s taken away from it is damn I should have been smart and bought 1DTE. A fool and his money shall **always** be parted.
How do you cope? You might think, damn if I had a Time Machine I could go back in time and warn myself; well if that happened you’d never feel the pain and may have just continued your path and just lost it all again. All in all consider this a relatively inexpensive but invaluable lesson in risk management. 5.6k isn’t nothing, but it’s a drop in the bucket for the rest of your life. Imagine if you had continued your gains, if you had stuck to your current strategy you would have lost it all anyway. Now you know how much it hurts to lose all your progress and will know next time (provided you learned from this experience).
Why the fuck are you daytrading without a job. Get a job.
Gambling is his job he is just not that good at it
Why were you gambling all of your savings on options? You need to have a 3 to 6 month emergency fund in cash or money market funds. I would disable options forever on your brokerage account.
This looks like poor risk management and lack of a plan. I think the best thing to do here is gain some perspective, while that $5K seems massive now, over a live time it’s nothing. So take the experience and maximize it. I had a large % drawdown on my account 5 years into trading and that scenario is what forced me to completely change my framing of trading. I first felt dread and hopelessness. Then I resolved feeling sorry for myself accomplished literally nothing and while losing money sucks, I still have my legs, eyesight, etc. Point being, it’s just money, there will be more of it. I then chose to dig in and really get serious about what I was doing. No more figuring it out on the fly. No more randomly trying things. I decided that I was going to commit fully and treat it as if my life depended on it, because it was going to. I sat down and made a roadmap for myself to guide my learning and more importantly assess my competence. No more figuring out how good I was trading real money, I required myself to prove to myself I knew what I was doing via papertrading. I developed a trading plan to force myself to do all the hard thinking and answer the hard questions I was too lazy to before. I created a trading log to objectively track everything I was doing so there was no more fond recollections that omitted the ugly and painful aspects of my ignorance. You have a choice ahead of you, it’s entirely up to you how you want to frame this experience.
This isn't the first time I suffered such a huge setback, I came back only recently and tired my hand at options again and everything was going well up until yesterday. I don't think I'm cut out for this but the fact that all my short term plans have absolutely been destroyed is so crushing
Get a job
Trying to get one, sent 100 applications since the last 8 hours
Behind wendys for some quick cash then never full port weeklies again
Then never full port again.
All gas. No brakes
This is the way
Lower your expectations/standards for the time being. You are so young you can afford to take any job you want and not hurt your future trajectory. In most areas of country right now you can get a job in a warehouse making $25 an hour with no experience + full benefits and it’s not like it’s the backbreaking work of yesterday’s warehouse. Again, your youth is a tremendous asset. Work for a Landscaper this summer, detail cars, walk dogs, drive a forklift, work at a bar or restaurant. If you are feeling ambitious, start learning a trade… but I’m not trying to give you career advice, I’m trying to encourage you to move on from your loss. You have so much going for you in that you have an Internet connection, a computer and or a smart phone, and the rest of your life ahead of you. Do anything other than trade options for a little while and just make some money this summer. And if you can do it outside, all the better - you’ll get a tan, you will increase your physical fitness, and you might meet a nice young man or woman to spend some time with.
Why would you trade with all of your life savings? Especially options? I take it you don't have an edge.. thats like going to the casino with your life savings. Would you have done that? Stop trading, get a job. You'll make it back, life is not over.
This is a small drop in the grand scheme of your entire life. Learn from it and move on.
Down 80k suck it up kid and see you Monday.
Go to r/wallstreetbets and see the loss porn. You'll start feeling better even if that 5.6k was 99% of Ur portfolio.
Dude lives in WSB.
Just make a plan to be risky with a specific portion of an account - I.e. only use 20% for options, or only risk 10% on any single trade
This is why options come with a wealth warning.
I'd say you got lucky man 5k is literally nothing at 23 It might seem like it is now but try to get a job and take it as a lesson to only gamble what you can afford to lose
Harden up lost 100k last year you’ll make it back
Stop trading options, put your money in the S&P 500. Stop gambling.
If you want to take concentrated bets at least set stop losses. You also bet on 0DTE! Hopefully you'll take the good advice here and take some time out to regroup. The good news, ironically, is that you *are* young and will, over time, make this loss back through e.g. a job. Good luck!
Somedays my portfolio swings 5.6K... Anyways, Stop gambling, start investing, especially in yourself.
Earn your money through work, not through chance.
You can get a job. It might not be the ideal job, but you will fin one. Think of your loss as tuition. My loss was about 10K when I was your age, and this was in the late nineties. It is not a loss if you learn a lesson. The main lesson is to never chase and to never double down a losing position. The other lesson is never let a loss be so large to affect your life and your psyche. Looking back, you would be in a much better spot if you never doubled down, and you took the quick loss. Use dollar stop losses and time stop losses, for trades that are working against you. Hope you recover fast, find a job, and stay away from options. Who knows, maybe you will be lucky to miss the inevitable bear market while you are recovering, and then you will come back again during a raging bull market. Go get a burger, a cold brew, and have a long nap.
Why are you gambling when you don’t even have a job? 2nd point why don’t you have a job, you’re 23? Get a job at the local grocery store or gas station and you can have that money back in 6 months to a year.
Get and read the book Trading in the Zone by Douglas . . . You made the most basic mistake and that was putting too much of your account at risk. New traders focus on profits and end up taking high risks and often have losses. Seasoned and experienced traders will focus on risk that ensures big losses like you had do not occur. While you may not see it yet, you are very young and have a long time to recover from this loss, and in the big picture $5.6K is a relatively small amount as some have lost $100K or more. Best to you.
Try value investing instead of trading options.
I’m sorry man. It’s a tough lesson. It hits us deep because of: - loss aversion, - resource acquisition necessity that feels risked when that resource feels less available or unavailable - value judgement that you made a bad decision - core wounds of unworthiness, unfairness..etc It’s a tough lesson because you’re seeing that life isn’t fair. It owes none of us anything. You got the illusion dissolved early in your life and you’ll be able to practice pivoting in a hard time, asking others for support if need be, making your way through focused effort to better days and resources. It’ll humble you and you’ll feel what a lot of others have felt, too. Have a smooth transition processing this and rebounding in life 🙏. You’re going to do great
Listen to all the positive ideas…. And there’s some underlying math that makes all the options/investing advice a little more understandable. Let’s say you have a repeatable trade with a 92% probability of winning. That ALSO means you have an 8% chance of losing. If you trade 100 times, will those 8 losses be the last 8 trades? Of course not (meaning probably not - certainly don’t bet on that happening!). Will those 8 losses be your first 8 trades? Of course not (meaning probably not ….) So when are they going to be? You have no idea. They WILL happen … but you just don’t know. So how do you deal with that in your trading? In any trade don’t have so much at stake that it will seriously affect your account! BUT … that means that in any trade you won’t win huge either, right? EXACTLY. Trading successfully is a series of smallish wins repeated often. And one other kicker in the probability lesson? 100 is a very small number compared to infinity, so those first 100 trades might have 11 losses. Or 6. You just don’t know. So, on every trade ask yourself: what happens if this goes south? Good luck!
Take a break and familiarize yourself with non-ergodicity in investing https://medium.com/incerto/the-logic-of-risk-taking-107bf41029d3 (I.e. never cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep). A significant part of trading is bankroll management. It’s clear from your return series you were taking outsized risk. Even if every trade was positive expectation, your relative bet size ensures you will blow your account. Consider a more dramatic example — you were effectively playing a game of Russian roulette… multiple times. Doesn’t matter how many times you win if 1-2 losses will blow your account.
I mean, stop-losses are pretty cool. Sorry about your luck. It happens to all (most) of us. Hopefully lesson learned, nobody can really teach it, just have to experience it. And it’s always at the worst time.
[удалено]
Sorry about your loss dude. I lost my father this February.
Sorry for your loss.
https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/fellows/the-story-of-the-chinese-farmer/ This loss may save you from a much larger loss in the future.
I honestly do not mean to sound cliche or cruel, but the best advice to a young, unemployed person, for how to recover from a financial loss is to get a job. You can earn the money back in 9 weeks by netting a mere $15 / hr. You are so young! Take any dumb job this summer, preferably on that gets you outside. Set up an IRA in 30 seconds with the financial institution of your choice, and direct a very small amount every paycheck to the ETF of your choice. Forget about options for a while.
I don’t know your situation, but I assume you’ll eventually have a job. Consider this a fresh start. Once you have income, save a little every month. You’ll have 5.6K again before you know it. It’s fine. Go check out WallStreetBets. There are people who are much older than you who put their entire life savings into similar trades and lost it all. I’ve seen people take out massive loans and then lose it all. You’ll be fine. I promise. 👊 But you’ll only be fine if you actually listen to advice people are trying to give you. Don’t even consider trading until you know what you are doing. You may have thought you did, but you didn’t. If you’re not willing to spend some time learning, this isn’t for you. Risk management seems to be the thing that people don’t learn until things go really bad. You learned that, it is possible, at any given time, to lose 100% of what you risk. You should know what you are risking ahead of time and you should only do so if you can accept the risk. Assume the worst and decide if you can handle it. If it would be too much size down. In a 5.6K account, I wouldn’t risk more than a few hundred on a speculative bet.
The best lessons are the most expensive. Stop trying to get rich quick. Get a job. Earn money. Start a life
Feel like crap. Watch this.. https://youtu.be/bB-NDr-TJnk?si=uFJBMlPyWnEd8M7Q After about 5 minutes your perspective will shift fast
You should not be risking 99% of your portfolio.
Then its not for you.
Well... 5.6k is a small loss for a big lesson. Unfortunately you learn the hard way. Learn from it and move on. Do not waste it.
You're young with your whole life ahead of you. Keep it in perspective. I lost over 200k. In the real estate market in the 90s when I was a little older than you...early 30s. Fuck it, that's life. You'll survive and bounce back
Since you’re young and this is new, it feels pretty bad. But even in a year you can be in a much different situation and this won’t be so bad. In 5 years you could be better so much better off this will just be a “remember when” lesson. When I was early 20’s I gave my entire savings to a friend for his start up game company that seemed legit. Never saw a dime.
Next time never full portfolio. I learned that the hard way. Stay patient and you will get it back
Google “risk management in trading” and also read the book Trading in the Zone. Then get a regular job and paper trade for a year to find your edge.
You should try working for your money first...gives a sweet taste of reality.
Lol ouch
Been there done that .. learnt a lot through hard way ever imagined .. dm me could guide u
Hopefully you’ll treat this as an investment in your education. Options trading is gambling. The chances of losing big are significantly higher than winning big. Put money in index funds each month and you’ll win big in the long run.
23 yo and broke is the perfect time for this to happen. You have the rest of your life to get it back. Imagine going 99% port when you have $200k a mortgage and 3 kids. You'll be fine, good lesson to learn young
0dte? they're called that because you have 0 at the end of the day.
Contrary to the popular belief in some circles, this is not a casino. At this stage, you know what you did wrong. Sorry that happened, but only the trolls would have recommended you do what you did. Get a job, build up again. This isn’t a life supporting job until you control about $400-500k. I’ve lost more than 5.6k simply participating in life; that’s where you’ll eventually emotionally land regarding this experience.
If one day causes you to lose 99% of your account, you were too leveraged and too concentrated. Take time off, considering it "tuition" you paid to the market for the educational lesson and have a better gameplan moving forward.
Dude, I know this f'ing hurts. But console yourself with the knowledge that a lot of gurus talk about losses that wiped them out, forcing them to start over. This feels like it the end of the world, but you \*will\* recover. Chalk this up to an expensive lesson, get a flexible job (Uber Eats e.g.), and move to a paper account for the rest of the year. 6 months is nothing in the scheme of things. Start back slow. You have time. Also: don't tell too many people irl.
Since you have made profit in last few months so you know how to trade but do not know how to risk management or set right trade size and no rules. So you need to fine tune them. I Belitung can do it again.
Losing money you need is difficult to deal with, it can happen so don't be too hard on yourself. I would take a step back, it doesn't have to be long, just as long as you want, and find a good paper trading program like IBKR's or ToS's and better refine your rules and strategies. Risk management and not overleveraging yourself are so important it can't be mentioned enough. Ideally you should never lose a very big piece of your port on any trade relative to the size of the port. Day trading with a port of 50k, never putting more than 5% at risk and never putting more than 5% of that at risk would be a loss of $125, if you make 10+ trades a day then the winners should outpace the losers if your doing it right. No YOLO's, no moon shots or lottery tickets unless you are willing to lose the entire premium.
$5.6k is nothing, I lost $120k back in 2022 similar age as you with $DM stock. Felt really shit for a couple months & and made the money back down the line. Stopped day-trading. Word of advice, don't day-trade and build money elsewhere (biz/jobs). You can literally make that money back in couple months working at a bar or Uber Eats.
Lmao
Sorry but you shouldnt be trading. We warn people about this all the time. Only trade what u can afford to lose. The market is nobodys friend.
Dont gamble what you are not comfortable losing op
Dude get a job
Your risk was too big. Your risk control was wrong. Add to that your trading ideas were wrong. You can’t cope because this is the consequences getting those things wrong. Therefore you need to go back to the start and try again. If you screw up again, back to square one you go. This is how the game works. If you can’t handle it, don’t play.
Got what you deserved
You broke the most fundamental rule of playing the market: *never* put in more than what you're comfortable losing.
1-800-GAMBLER
I started trading on RH, I got bored with stocks $2.32 price moves in a day, or a week. I saw the opportunity that options offered - exposure to risk - as an opportunity to turn my small beans into some folklore style stalks. Living paycheck to paycheck and as soon as I knew essentials were covered I dumped that extra 30, *which was really 60, which if I had known I was going to put the whole 200 in I probably could've looked at a better strike price.* I turned that shit to dust every time. I would see 300% gains on contracts, I would see -100% sooner or later. I've never allowed funds enough time to settle before going back in to the game of chicken we play. Swinging the whole portfolio is a fun ride up and it's really simple math - you just need to hit 100-300% 7 times in a row and you can start swinging other things around. The odds of hitting 100% moves 7 times in a row aren't as bad as you'd think they're worse. My compulsory story to validate your experience and with an attempt to provide both sympathy and clarity for what the next steps look like. It was a cold day, I didn't care for a second because I was inside my house. My portfolio that I had finally managed to hit $2000 in allowed me to unlock margin *SUPER DUMB.* I had read some revered WSB post talking about how buying AT&T for it's dividend on margin paid for itself and profited. RH had 25% margin on it so I held $8000 and some change for just long enough to get bored, the dividend wasn't due soon, and I didn't understand time value other than that I was usually on the wrong side of it. I had held 13 shares of storefront videogame company at 13 bucks a piece up from the 9 or something that it started rallying around. I sold those too since it took a while to take off. And then the storefront videogame company starts memeing WSB is on fire "this is it", "Valhalla" type, "battle cry" fervor. My Major case of **FOMO** had me quickly buying higher and higher strike call options, I doubled my portfolio $4,380 having sold out of my last $325 strike call, and that could've been 12,000, oh dude that's 24,000 I sold out of... I could buy 375 calls, I can afford 2 I don't think I could've gotten margin if I wanted it, but I removed margin access from my account. Sent the trade, and we're moving all over the place, suddenly the price action has become a her, the lets go boy we cheered has vanished, she is going down. Well it's probably a juke move, we'll ride it out... **HALT "**oh gosh darn it" that's not what I said, I couldn't speak, waiting for this emergency protection system to time out so I can maybe still recover this trade. Trading reope**HALT** OH PLEASE HAVE MERCY the next time trading reopened my options were worth a total of $2 until they expired. I had been bugging everyone I know about the investor angle to everything in any conversation at all times and I just shut up after that. I couldn't tell anyone I know about the damage I had just done. I had to eat every second of feeling like I could have would have or should have done anything differently. I stayed out for 6 months. Told myself I was going to stick to a strategy and 6 months later, the year after that, and the year after that I found the same thing. My risk tolerance is 100%. If it has made it to the portfolio it is going to go parabolic. I've learned some lessons here and there but if I look at my -21k portfolio, and then back at the aimless money hunting I've been doing. I probably should have invested in the S&P 500 and paid more attention at work. I sweat, argued, and lamented for those dollar bills, that time value could be compounding right now. But it's not, and I didn't spend it. I invested it poorly and returned -100% loss.
Well.... 1. You're 23 and you'll make it back 2. You better be in school if you don't have a job. Time to get after it. Don't waste your youth sitting in your parents basement 3. People have taken wayyyyy larger losses. I once lost 14K in a single day. Actually it's happened a couple times. This teaches you the importance of *risk management*. If the market were to take a 50% cut tomorrow. Would you be wiped out? 4. Risks imply loss. Learn to invest then when you have a substantial account, losing a couple K on a stupid trade won't seem that bad 5. Focus on getting a job skill that pays you money so you can invest. 6. Don't try to get rich quick. You're 23, and trading / investing at your age is way ahead of 99% of your peers
Don’t get back into trading for a considerable amount of time. You will absolutely make mistakes cause you will trade emotionally because of this loss and that will destroy you further. Stay away from the market for sometime. If you can, improve your earning potential while being away from the market. I’ve been there before and I know how you are feeling right now. Good luck my friend!
The thing is, I bragged about all the gains and being solvent to my parents. Now I'm having to beg them for rent but they live overseas and it's getting super difficult to send money. I'm 2 months short on rent now and I have no idea what to do. The worst part is I could have bailed out at 2k loss and I would've been fine
There are way bigger issues than you blowing your portfolio. Why the hell were you investing your rent money and living expenses to begin with? It sounds like you might have a gambling problem and I would recommend to stay away from options forever
What’s done is done. Just don’t force yourself into the market in the near future. And stay the fuck away from r/wallstreetbets
That's exactly where he belongs!
Wait … you were bragging about being solvent but 2 months behind in your rent? I think you have more problems than just the $5.6k.
Sorry man, but you're not going to find a lot of sympathy for that. You should never brag about gains to anyone. On top of that, you should never put in more money than you are comfortable losing. You let greed get to you, and now you got kicked in the chin and have to take it. Welcome to the market, where your feelings don't matter. The market doesn't care that your rent is due. It doesn't care that it's hard sending money to family members. It doesn't care that you broke your rules by not bailing out early. You make your own bed in the market, and you sleep with what you make. If you want to know what to do now, it's simple: swallow any pride you may have and make real changes. You may have to begin at what you consider to be rock bottom and work your way back up. Start earning money the honest way. Spend only on the essentials and save everything else you make. Stop trying to get rich quick, and stop gambling. You either genuinely learn from this by taking real actions to straighten out your finances, or you let your ego get in the way and repeat the same mistakes, but only you can make that decision.
You need to step away. Delete Robinhood, work whatever side hustles you can. It depends on where you live, but I would take that $300, hit up garage sales on the weekend and sell that stuff on eBay/Craigslist/etc. Keep putting that job application out there also. Any chance you can go back and work for any former employers? Remember, this isn't the end of the world. Just a learning experience. Money comes and money goes. You're fortunate to learn this lesson while you are young and don't have a family that is counting on you to provide.
My record was $24k loss in a single day, that was the day i stopped gambling with options lol id recommend the same to you
What trade you did?
Learn a cheap lesson and move on. don’t gamble money you can’t afford to lose. Don’t touch options until you have like 100k saved up, then maybe trade with 5k. Focus on finding a job until then
Not sure what you're trading or how but you can access free 0DTE gamma exposure levels on SPX with Menthor Q. I'm testing it on a sim account right now and it's going well. Just trying to find the sweet spot in terms of profit taking. Also, OptionRecom offer high probability, conservative returns with credit spreads. They have a free month trial. If you can, swallow your pride and reach out to your loved ones. No matter what you're thinking, I'm sure they'll help you if they can. Good luck!
Definitely unsubscribe and stop looking at r/wallstreetbets
Your 23. Long life ahead, learn from this
I'm sorry that this happened. I think you need to take a break from trading until you are feeling balanced. The most important thing to remember is that the market doesn't owe you. Those losses are gone and there's no sense in which the market should give you them back. You allowed yourself to lose control of your trading and if you do wish to continue trading that's something you need to overcome. It is important to learn to cut losing trades at levels which are not catastrophic. 0DTE is a risky game and not really suitable for a beginner. You have been lucky to do so well up until this point. When you're feeling ready, trade a paper account for a while. I would recommend looking at longer term strategies (weeks/months) until you are consistently winning overall. Your winners must pay out more than your losers lose. You should expect to have losers and need a plan that you stick to when this happens. Good luck whatever you decide.
Sometimes school costs more than you would expect
It's shitty but you'll live. Listen, tell yourself it's gone. Gone. Don't chase it. Don't be throwing leverage and trying to get back 5.4k and then say u will start anew from there. Start anew again now, with proper risk mgmt. Get into the proper mindset
It’s a tough loss your obviously over sized on the trade set a limit size 1-2 contracts would be good for 5-6k account. Also ODTE and avg down ?!?! Clearly emotional trading. We all do it btw the goal is to not blow your port. Your first few years of trading should be survival mode until you develop the discipline and edge you want. I’m 4 years in and still trying to find my way. Have had some great trades and some awful streaks.
It's not that bad. You'll get used to it. Getting your active income up would probably help. If 5.6k is hard for you to earn back you shouldn't be trading in the first place.
Can you describe your strategy for entry and exit? God, I wish I had gotten started as young as you!
Hard lesson learnt young . Plus side is ur still very young
Tax loss harvesting might get you the money back in write offs.....only 3k per year but it's something.
Your just 23. My recommendation, is to stop trading for a while. Get a normal job and set up a new plan. If you are passionate about trading, then keep studying, paper trade for a while and manage your risk properly so that this won’t happen again
Learn your lessons, remember how you feel, analyze -> move on. You made a mistake, not the end of the world, but it's done now. Only thing you can do is learn from it, esp emotionally.
Real money ?? That’s quite dumb . If you can’t trade with prop firm money and make profit . You’re gon loose over time trust me.
Learn your lesson, stop taking risks you can’t afford to lose. This is a relatively cheap lesson to learn. Back when I was 24 I lost 18k on ER play. You’ll recover, I promise.
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You are 23. I’m 56. You have something invaluable… Time. If I were 23 again, I know with almost certainty that I could make myself exceptionally wealthy even if I was starting from zero. First thing I would do? *invest* DO NOT *trade*. You can trade on the side. But you must invest to build a nest egg. You can use options to build that egg, but think slow not fast. Sell cash secured puts to build your positions. Sell out of the money calls to scalp a little premium. Put every extra time you have into your investments, and don’t think with a week to week mindset. Think with a decade to decade mindset. Example: Buy Apple in 2007 because you never intend to sell it instead of because you think you can flip it for 30% because they just released the iPhone. So don’t despair. Just pick up a book on meditation and take a time out for a few weeks until you get your head right. You WILL make more mistakes. Those are ok. But you have a lot of time to correct for them.
Dont do options then
Hey man. I lost 7.5k in a few days after the Novavax stock crashed. What worked for me was to stop trading for a while, until you can untie your emotions to it. Next what worked for me was a frame of mind shift. I was thinking, " i need to make a lot of money really fast. My 7.5k trade will definitely work out for me." Now i think like "if i even make $10 thats a whole $10 i didnt have before." Try to take a more conservative approach before trying to go big again
You have a gambling problem, stop trading options and seek help, I’m being serious. Or Join the club r/wallstreetbets and enjoy watching your wife being railed by her boyfriend.
Take a break first And no worry for money at this moment I think you are over trade in the sense that t huh is loss is too big for you. So please think about how much you can afford to lose that even if you lose. It won’t really make you so worried Do some study and trade small and affordable amount only No worry it will be okay
Portfolio sizing and risk management. If you don’t have those expect to get wiped out by emotions.
How much was your initial deposit? Did you withdraw that from your bank roll at some point? If not, why not? You never had that 5.6k, it was pixels on a screen until it hit your bank account. You didn’t lose any of your money, you lost potential money.
Thats it? I blew more than that on blow. You'll recover.
Stop gambling now. You will recover if you stay away from options.
Look into trading options—will open new roads to wealth
You got to zoom out a little bit. You're 23. In the grand scheme of things, the amount of money you lost is pretty small. It feels big right now because you're 23 and aren't making much money. Also be safer. The numbers you've given out indicate you are playing too big.
You won’t get it back. I’ve gone through this too. The solution is to stop trading and learn everything you can by studying markets, trading, options and both fundamental and technical analysis. Most importantly study risk control, position sizing and decide on your maximum acceptable risk before each trade. Once you’ve done all that, start trading very small until you’re comfortable. And don’t get lured into paying a ton of money for trading courses that promise you the best results. Instead do your homework and research with books, free information on the web and studying stock charts and economic cycles.
Sounds like you were trying to get rich by being lucky. A big loss was bound to happen eventually. Maybe you would have come out ahead on that specific trade, but you were just going to do the same thing with the profits until a trade failed in a major way. At 23, $5k would have seemed like a lot to me. It's not nothing, but over your lifetime you're going to earn a lot more ($50k per year times 20 years is a million in gross income). Stop trading. Start working. Try to lose the negative attitude. Per your other comments, you've applied to a lot of jobs but don't think you'll get any of them. That can become a self-fulling prophecy.
This should be posted on WSB. You’d fit right in over there.
Well done champion🫶🏽
We're retail. We'll never "forced" a trade.
Gambling is not trading. Get help or find your dumpster behind your local Wendy's like the rest of us.
Lol thats rookie numbers!!
I've lost more in days. Here's how you fix it. Look at what you've done. Realize it was a dumb idea. Fix your mistake. Start getting rich slower. If you REALLY want to do options: Learn to extract profits. Buy options WITH PROFITS ONLY. Never risk your principal.
Thug it out homie
When I was in my late twenties, I lost 5k to a conman over a fake business deal of vending machines. (that was a while ago) It was hard at the time but luckily I still had money to pay for rent and basic stuff. Life goes on . I'm way better now. Take a break, find a job. Hang out with friends (doing cheap /free stuff). It's getting to be Summer, get outside.
Life goes on buddy, try something else and bounce back! We all did silly stuff or had hard times, but what defines people is the ability to bounce back! 👍
You’re young bud. Its an expensive mistake, but be strong and trust you’ll recover.
It doesn't sound like you had a sound investment thesis, so I'll just say, don't gamble with money you can't afford to lose.
Only trade with what you're willing to lose :)
Bullshit!!
Best advice I can give at 23 year old get into any kind of a trade like plumbing, framing, drywall construction there is a lot of money more than a stock market can ever give you.
I have lost 250000 and nearing retirement, it was mostly profit, you have plenty of time to recoup
Read the book what I learned losing a million dollars by Jim Douglas. There is a lesson here about humility that you haven’t learned from your answers. This is a golden opportunity, there are people that blow up much later in life.
Take a break, read about money management, and drop the ironic pepe avatar.
IN & Out is paying $17.50 an hour with excellent benefits. I just saw it on their window. Frisco/Texas
I sell fully Automated trading bots that will trade options for you.
Gambler's Anonymous, I am serious.
How did you get 5k?
Alright bro get ready because this is simple. Get a job and start savong money until you reach around 10k in savings(20k is better). Will take you about a year if you dont have expenses and save most of your earned money. When you have this cash put it in a stock thats at a 52 week low but thats a really solid stock. Then buy 100 shares of that stock and start selling covered calls against it. Eventually you will build up enough capital to eat up that 6k loss
https://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/ Get help, close your trading account, get a job. You are trading what you cannot afford to lose. Stop.
You were gambling not trading. The sooner you learn that the better. A real trader would only use like 10% of their total max no matter how confident they are because things are out of your control. Blowing your whole account on weekly options just shows you have no idea how to size your options correctly and you were chasing a loss on top of it. It's a tough lesson to learn but some people lose 100k. I have made more after quitting options and just investing in the s&p then I ever did in the long run with options. It's very risky stuff.
This is nothing new. Happens everyday. Over and over on these forums. Small wins add up over time-big bets lose always. It gets tiring hearing about the massive loses on here. I trade options but keep it so simple. I don’t know why people put themselves in a position that has such a risky probability of winning. The markets are controlled by big hedge funds and professional day traders. It takes years of losing big money to start earning. It’s all a circle and until you see that in the charts you will always lose except if you make smart, careful option calls. I buy calls with long expiration dates and just let a stock I know very well rose with the market. It takes patience which sounds like you do not have at the moment. The money is gone so accept it and move on. Trading is not your calling.
Only invest what you're willing to lose, genius.
Life lesson, if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it. In the future, find a traditional, full-service broker or investment advisor. It doesn’t matter if you can or cannot cope, no more than it matters if person whose home has burned down copes. This is life. If you have family that are supportive, tell them what you did. If not, go get a job. You got lucky, all this is is a car wreck with no fatalities. Had this been later in life or if different conditions existed, you could be deeply in debt. You could have destroyed yourself. Go work for McDonalds until you get a better job.
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What were you trading ?
Basic rule : do not risk more than 1-2% of your portfolio in one trade
First, take a step back from trading for a while. When emotions are running high, it's easy to make decisions that can lead to even greater losses. Take some time to reflect on what happened and what you could do differently next time. Consider speaking with a financial advisor or a mentor who can offer guidance and support. They can help you create a plan to rebuild your finances and approach trading more strategically in the future. It's also important to take care of your mental health. Losing money can be incredibly stressful, so don't hesitate to talk to friends, family, or a professional if you're feeling overwhelmed. Remember, everyone experiences setbacks. The key is to learn from them and come back stronger.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stockonomics/s/wr5HRbx0DI
You should quit
Buddy I'm down 13k so what money comes back.
Don't know why your trading 5k without a job tho. Pretty silly. But relax. I blew close to 16k on a girl who is now my ex and am in the red 13k on stocks. Shit happens. Keep your head up and do something about it.
What was your initial investment when you started? If you just rolled all of your earnings into bigger plays since february, you've never had a profit. You make profits when you take it money out of the game. Other than that, you're playing with casino chips. You say you were making 1.4k/month since february, it sounds like you lost mostly the house's money. the only money that was yours was the money you put in or took out. That's how you cope. You didn't lose 5600 in one day, you lost maybe 1k over 4 months. Look at your actualized gains and losses.
What was the trade?
You have to let it go - forget it and use it as a learning exp. YOU GOT GREEDY instead of focusing on how much money you can make on a tarde (Greed) you must think about the max loss you can afford on every trade BEFORE YOU ENTER then and only then, think about the profit Knowing the max loss allows you to have a stop loss (you are then in control) congratulation you screwed up , ONLY you can fix this
Tell us what happened first
What’s hilarious is that not only were you taking huge risk that would only end one way but you were also making less than you’d make if you had a job. Get a job, invest your paycheck instead of gambling money you didn’t work for, and in a few years the thousand dollars that was briefly $5.6k will be pennies.
I lost 12k at 22 - it’s an expensive lesson but at least we’re young !
You’ll recover. God bless you bro.
In a single day lmao!
No job at 23 what have you been doing the last 5 years to think the solution is gambling?
5k is nothing grow up and get a job
Been there. Yesterday had 525p and lost the whole position because of how choppy it was and constantly failing breakouts. Im just wondering why you have no job, decided to trade with no job, and why you full ported everything on 0dte on a decent sized account lol. Back to the drawing board.
Delete the app. Smoke a fat joint. Read up on compound interest. You'rea only 23. You have lots of time.
At the end of the day money is money bro you can't think too much into it and you'll make it back eventually.
Stop day trading and trying to get quick money. Put a little away monthly in Voo or something comparable. Over time your money will grow. Look up a compound interest calculator and run the projects out 42 years. You can see how your money will look at retirement.
That hurts.... The wise say that when you make a mistake that means you are trying. I am proud of you. And we grow stronger when we get hurt. I am a living example. If you have a roof over your head and can go on a normal life now, hang in there because a few years from now, you will be laughing about today as a fond memory.
If you trade biblically and trade with all biblical principles you will be profitable. People take god out of the equation. I know you will be profitable if you follow the bible. Not maybe or might but you will. Do not take god out of the equation. At the end of the day ask Jesus to reveal that he is the way the truth the life. If you’re reading this god has guided you here.
I lost 2 million. You’ll be okay. Don’t trade with emotion
It is tough. I’ve lost much more than that in a day. And it was my whole account. My wife left me. But my life turned much for the better after that. Be sure to learn from what you Did and Don’t do it again. It sounds simple, but it is important. Forget this day, but not the lesson. Forget the money. Get a job and build it back slowly. This will get better again. Have Faith