Here is a Quora question that I got in the personalized weekly newsletter. I never had anything close to a lot of money, but I’m pretty sure that if a miracle happens and one day I do, I’ll lose them all pretty quickly. Thus, I was vaguely interested in the answers. However, the answer by James Altucher (most voted) was way more than I expected.
Then Internet stocks started to go down. This is ridiculous, I thought. The Internet is here to stay. I knew nothing about stocks or valuations or anything resembling rational thought. I doubled down. Then quadrupled down. Then 8-upled down.
From June 2000 until September, 2001 I probably lost $1 million a month. When anyone says, “this is ridiculous”, that’s code for, “I’m about to lose a lot of money”.
I couldn’t stop. I was an addict. I wanted to get back up to the peak.
I wanted to be loved. I wanted to have $100 million so people would love me.
I was the worst idiot. Writing this now I feel like slitting my wrists and stomach. I had 2 kids.
I felt like I was going to die. That zero equals death. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. I had lost all my friends. Nobody returned calls. I would go to the ATM machine and feel my blood going through my whole body when I saw how much was left. I was going to zero and nothing could stop it. There were no jobs, there was nothing.
Read the whole thing. It’s fascinating and impressive.