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I had some success trading a long/short stock portfolio, but on longer time periods than day trading (holding positions from few weeks to few months). The fun l
by bionsystem 2y ago
I had some success trading a long/short stock portfolio, but on longer time periods than day trading (holding positions from few weeks to few months). The fun lasted almost 3 years. Then I shorted META from 300 to 100 and felt on top of the world, it was after shorting a bunch of other "covid success stories" like zoom, moderna, carvana, and making 50%+ return on each in a reasonnably concentrated portfolio. The rest of my portfolio was doing ok as well.
As META kept going down I kept adding to my position (meaning shorting more), and then it came back up. I ended up a loser on the position despite being up almost 70% at some point. I couldn't believe in a recovery for the company.
I then thought "never again" and started to trade options so that I would have a more disciplined, guaranteed stop loss. I lost more than 50% of my margin that year and another 50% 6 month later, so I was back below square 1 at the end of it all. We are talking small numbers (maybe losing 15k in total) but an amazing amount of time and energy spent doing all this which generated a lot of stress.
- jnsie 2y ago> We are talking small numbers (maybe losing 15k in total) but an amazing amount of time and energy spent doing all this which generated a lot of stress. This was roughly my experience too. Stopping after the above trade meant my total losses were not huge (relatively speaking; maybe $2000) but I put an incredible amount of effort into it and the stress was huge. I don't fully regret it because, frankly, it was very exciting, I had a lot of fun and it was extremely interesting trying to predict the ebb and flow of the market and the psychology behind moves.