BANKRUPT A Wall Street shit show

Chapter One: Anxious and Disturbed. A daytrader's nightmare

She thought she had a little problem. At first she didn't care. And she didn't tell anyone. Not that anyone would care. Because who does? When things are bad, doesn't everybody disappear? As if they never knew you? But that didn't bother her either. She couldn't stand people. In fact, she was in this position because she wanted to be as far from people as she possibly could.
Money.
That's what money did.
Kept you alone.
Private.
Secure.
Without strings.
Without commitment.
Without monotony.
Without problems.
Money was freedom.
She had three goals: No landlord, no employer, no husband.
Done and done.
Until the trade went awry. And it always does, doesn't it? At first, it's not bad. Thirty percent down. You tell yourself you're gonna come back. It's going to be okay. And so she took a week and waited and then averaged down with the rest of her money. But ... it still went away from her. Far away. Quickly 75% down in her portfolio came the reverse split. 10 for 1.
BOOM.
This was horrendous.
But nothing a few bank loans couldn't cure. Because if she was on margin, she would have blown up by now. Another account. Imploding like the wind. But by this time, she wasn't trading the boring stocks: the twittah ... which she rode from 14 to 28, or retail stocks, Tiffany which was always a good trade and Bebe... no, she had escalated to volatility. The mack daddy of trading. This was like going from smoking pot to freebasing crack. The gap up the gap up THE GAP UP WAS PHENOMENAL. INCREDIBLE. A wave you just wanted to ride AND RIDE. She'd go long a mere two thousand shares in the aftermarket the night before and by 5 am California time, she'd sell and clock 4 large. 4 thousand dollars. And she hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. You think with that kind of P&L on a daily basis; making that much money before the market even opened, you'd call it a day. You'd leave it alone.
But no. Because there was a long day ahead.
And that ticker and CNBC and the stock message boards were calling her name... The constant moving, changing, up down in out all over the place, the highs, the lows, kept her hooked. She loved it. She loved to trade. Lived to trade.
It became all she ever cared about.
And she loved it like she never loved anything in her whole life.
At first it was magical and then it was medicine, and then it was misery.
And that's where the bank loans came in. Because what goes up, has to go down, doesn't it? Yes, in everything – except VOLATILITY. Volatility decays. It goes down and down and then reverse splits again. Rinse repeat.
If she was smart, she'd realize you only short volatility. You never average down. You put in a stop loss, take the hit, and then you short the pop.
But she couldn't take the hit.
Something about admitting she was wrong...
Don't get emotional was rule #1 in trading. Along with many other rules: hope is not a strategy, don't fight the fed, etc. etc.
But she wasn't one for rules.
No... she had magical thinking: it will come back, I will come back, I'm a fucking trader. I can and do beat the market on a daily basis. And this time will be no different.
But this time was different.
She called the bank and this was now her fourth loan. But these were smart loans.
"It's not a loan," the Bank executive would tell her, "It's a cash advance on your credit card."
"I understand," she'd reply, trying to hide the desperation in her voice. Don't let them hear that you need this money.... You need it like a drug... and if you don't get it... you're gonna fucking die...
"But there's no interest, correct? Not for 12 months?" Voice steady. Good.
"That's correct."
So who's the fool, she thought. They are. I'll trade out of this position and pay back the bank before the fucking interest kicks in, so don't even try to act like you hear this desperation in my voice. Because there's not. I am in full control. I'm a fucking trading. Do you hear me? A TRADER.
"Okay and you say you wired the funds?" she asks, watching, waiting, her bank account opened on her computer and she keeps refreshing, refreshing, waiting, waiting, but they are not there...They are not coming.
"Yes."
"Well, I don't see the funds!" Now she's getting a little unwound. Where's the money, huh?! You said it was immediate. I NEED IT NOW MOTHER FUCKER! NOW! WHERE ARE THE FUNDS?!!! She watches TVIX, the volatility ETN that she trades which is up on her other screen and she wants back in at 40 but it's going higher.... 41...42... She needs to buy a lot more to take her average down, but lately, her average doesn't even MOVE. She's holding other lots at 120! 120! But she'll never admit this to anyone. No, that's too high. Almost impossible to trade out of. Nobody comes back from that. And the market's been on a fucking tear. Now you have the Fed pumping billions into a market that's at all time highs. Does this make any sense? Does ANYTHING EVER MAKE ANY SENSE?!"
But then – the money hits.
And the funds are there.
Before she can even catch her breath, she clicks "transfer funds" on her iTrade account. With one pull down menu, her bank account instructions are already there and she hits "transfer 40,000." And BOOM. Itrade shows the money! It hits!
BINGO.
CHA-CHING. WITH LEVERAGE IT'S FOUR TIMES THE MONEY SO IT LOOKS LIKE SHE CAN TRADE WITH $160,000.
And she's LOVING LIFE RIGHT NOW.
I'm back. I'm back mother fuckers so get out of my way.
"Thank you so much," she says to the bank executive but she's clicked off she realizes before he even hears her.
She looks back at the TVIX chart.
It's flashing green and red... and orders move by fast and slow, and it's a hypnotic blur of figures and numbers, charts and graphs, and she grabs her mouse with the ease of the way Adam took the apple from Eve, and buys in.
Buying 930 tvix, market! BOOM!
I'M IN.
She gets printed at 43.32. Much higher than she wanted, and you can't use your margin money because they won't let you, it's too dangerous, too many people implode trading volatility, but who cares, who cares! I'M IN MOTHER FUCKERS SO LET'S GO!
* * *
It's 8:15 pm and she rolls into the restaurant. She's late but he's lucky she's even there she tells herself, and he's waiting, already sitting at the table waving.
She quickly looks around, checking out the crowd, is there anything better here, anybody she would like to fuck. The answer is usually an inevitable, no. And as she sits down at the table, one quick glance at this guy, she asks herself the same question, and it's also an inevitable no. This guy is a cousin's friend. "Oh, please Jolette, he likes you so much," she said after they met at her birthday party. The birthday party she didn't want to go to out in Berkeley. And the one she brought another guy with to and nobody seemed to understand that she was already with somebody, but he was just another nobody, but usually when you show up somewhere with a guy, it cuts down on the attention you get, sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. And attention was something she loathed. She more she got, the more she wanted to hide. Hated to be watched, observed, analyzed.
But that's what it seemed that all anybody ever wanted to do. But she'd usually get the last laugh. Never doing anything anybody wanted to. "Sure, okay, sounds good" were usually her last words. Along with, "Sounds great, I'll be there."
Only to never come, never show up, never be accountable.
Why should I be?
Other people needed people. Other people needed validation, praise. She wasn't one of them. The only praise she needed was the green she saw in her account when she was right on a trade.
And that's all she ever needed...
"How are you?" she asked, after he hugged her, tightly, smearing his cologne all over her.
"Good, great," he said, launching into a diatribe of his meeting earlier. And like a switch, she turned it off... not even listening, looking around for the waitress so she can order a drink. She was starving too. It was October and the clocks had just turned so technically it was really 9:15 pm... and tired and hungry is never a stellar combination. Plus, the markets gapped up at the close as they have been for the past four months with the fed and the central banks rigging the whole deal. And TVIX closed lower than she bought it at with the bank loan and she was not happy
So now she was really underwater.
Underwater in the trade.
And underwater sitting here at the table with this guy she can give two F's about. Why go, why bother with this?
Because I couldn't sit around at home any longer and watch green futures all night. Or porn. She had been porned out. Guys think girls don't like or watch porn. News flash: we do. And they provide, with a little help from ourselves, the perfect orgasm every time. So this guy is rambling on and on, and by this time, some fried calamari has arrived and she's watching him devour it with his fingers, and he licks his thumbs from the oil that's dripped all over the plate.
And it's disgusting. And she's appalled. And now he's telling her about some lady in the workplace who pulled down her pants in from of him. "And all I see are these black pubic hairs coming out of the top of this white granny underwear," he says, "and she goes, 'do you want some of this?' So I say no, and the next thing I know I'm fired from my technology job. I'm a victim of the 'ME TOO' movement," he claims, and then boasts how he's going on "CNN" to "tell his story."
Jolette listens with a blank face and wonders by this point if she's heard it all. She's only 27. But the stories from these idiots are enough to make her feel 90. There were guys who tried too hard and then there were guys who didn't try hard enough. She couldn't figure out which was worse. Probably the ones who didn't try, who couldn't be bothered, the good looking ones; the guys who waited for the girls to drop into their lap. The lazy ones. They were worse. They had no balls. No game. They would never trade. Could never trade. Couldn't fathom it. Little babies. But this guy, she couldn't figure out which category he fell into – maybe the pathetic category.
Or I am just pathetic for sitting here?
She wanted to devise some story, to make up some lie to get up and leave after her grilled salmon was finished, but she didn't have the energy. Just sit it out. And endure.
Just like she would sit out the trade.
And endure.
Times would get better, she told herself. They had to.
* * *.......