At this stage in my life, I tend to be positive, optimistic, upbeat. I have learned that things generally tend to work themselves out. But it wasn’t always so. I was an angry twenty something; horrified at the fact that life had become so difficult. I had been raised by a French woman who, although the carefree, happy go luckiest member of her family, grew up in Europe during wars. She tends to worry; she tends to be dramatic. Few people make a bigger mountain out of a molehill than my mother, so it stands to reason that I would have some of this instilled in me.
She did well for herself. She had personal success and she married well. As such, I was raised in a household that earned in the top 0.5% of families in the US. The town I grew up in, notably famous for its wealth, was loaded with top earners. In my school, my family ranked about in the middle I would guess. And the teachers regularly reminded us that we were the wealthiest kids in the country.
By the time I was ready for college, it all disappeared like a South Park retirement account. My father had gone on a fixed income, my mother had divorced my wealthy step-father and nobody was going to pay for college. I was caught off guard by this. It seemingly collapsed so quickly. I was turned down for college loans because my family had too much money. Isn’t it ironic ?
After growing up the little rich girl, at 18, I was out on the street without a dime. And so I spent my 20s doing the work/college thing as an angry lower-middle class young woman struggling to make ends meet and striving for a career that may never happen.
There was much drama and life experience after that until I met and married thehusband. Cut to 2006 – We had started a family….many experiences and successes in business brought thehusband and I to a certain place in our lives. We were both now in finance and this was the moment when I was ready to quit working in a “real” job to manage our money full-time. I had plenty of capital to do so with good cushion…a whole lot more than most people have when they start trading full time. 
For the next couple of years, we did well, I with my trading and thehusband with his success as a research analyst; we were growing our wealth nicely. And we took advantage of it, living lavishly. When the fall of 2008 came around, our boat was rocked. I was getting pretty nervous as I watched our accounts dive 10, 20, 30%…thehusband wasn’t worried yet. At first we were outperforming the market in our trading accounts. Oil was still going up while the broad indices were dropping. Being in companies like $XOM and $OXY, and making a few well timed shorts, we thought we had outsmarted the overall situation, but this didn’t last long. Thehusband is a smart man who tends towards optimism. He has always been my rock. When most people look outside and say, ” it’s a nice day”…he says ” it’s a Spectacular day”. He has often calmed me in the face of a storm. But in this case, it would have behooved us to be less positive earlier on.
Unfortunately, I sold near the bottom. Like so many others, I (and thehusband AKA: my in-house analyst) could not imagine the market going lower. When the S&P (and our capital) was cut by 50%, we both agreed it was time to give in. If I had known then what I know now… if I had had the stop loss rules in place then that I have now, I would be in much better shape today. I would have lost 10% of my capital at most, instead of nearly 50%. I remember thehusband saying we were better off than other folks who had lost 80%. Then in December, thehusband was laid off.
We traded together for the next 2 years. We were a little scared to have no solid income but it was fun working together. Friends were amazed that we would spend so much time in the same space day in and day out and still enjoy each others company. The truth is that he is my favorite person in the whole world. Working with him, analyzing the markets together, talking macro all day long. I actually dreaded spending time with anyone else. Why hang out with stupid people when I could hang out with him? No offense meant to stupid people.
To Be Continued…
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Each trader who has ever failed has thought she could bounce back from great loss; so has each who has succeeded. Life’s a bitch, but we can’t give up, can we.
…no we can’t. Thanks Idiot.
I hope traders who didn’t go through the market crash reads this. You can’t outsmart the market, I too learned this the hard way. When the market is unhealthy step aside. And always use stops. It’s better to fumble around with stops until you learn the art instead of being naked and hopeful without them. I call them protection.
Great read thewife I can’t wait to read part two.
Wow, very nice post. I lost in the tech wreck in 2000-2001 having most of my money in a Vangard Index fund, lost 20% and I was so pissed. I came from absolute nothing so I was even more pissed than usual. Took over my own accounts at that point, never a less than 10% gain per year since (many years better than that). It is scary to control your own destiny though, plenty of work.
thanks for the comments guys.