If you ever think day trading is easy money, please read this. This guy racked up a $9m (R165m) LOSS in just one day from his basement. https://twitter.com/EnronChairman/status/1258936315539787777

If I invest a $100 I can't lose more than a $100 right?

No. You certainly can.

You can definitely lose more than your investment if you're trading on margin.

Margin is effectively borrowing money from your broker to trade. CFDs are notorious for getting people into trouble.

Your broker keeps a level of cash as security for when you fuck up

That's when your broker gives you a "margin call" to add more cash

Most day traders fuck up, you're not going to consistently outperform high speed algos, institutions, hedge funds & guys with dark pool intel

If you really want to day trade, manage your risk.

Never risk more than 1-2% of your account on a single trade.

Every trade eats into your profits.

Use stops to cut losses.

Never trade an instrument you don't understand.

Don't trust anyone to trade for you.

Read everything.

If you don't read anything else on this post, this is important.

The margin requirements for guys like Interactive Brokers, IG, Plus500, everyone who sells you the idea of becoming the next Jordan Belfort, it's VERY low.

Basically, they give you alot more rope to hang yourself

In this case, the margin calls* did not go off.

This would ordinarily NEVER happen. The broker would have closed out this guy's position.

Instead, Interactive Brokers didn't have a system that could comprehend a negative oil price.

(*Margin call is a great movie btw)

Brokers that look after the "everyday trader" aren't reliable. Robinhood has also failed people recently with outages at critical times. You're driving in a car with no brakes and kinda hoping it stops by itself.

Even if you're lucky to squeeze out P&L, the fees will ruin you.