True, but honestly, the massive rally just felt artificial and unreasonable. I'm actually surprised it held up the entire time even until after hours

lmao thanks for giving it to me straight doc

Puts are options for if you think the markets are going down. It gives you the option to short the market, but only if the stock price is past your strike price you bought them for. Calls are the opposite for if you believe the markets are going up. There's also an added risk of degradation over time. You buy with an expiration date. Could be a day/week/months/years but the closer to your expiration, the quicker it can degrade your option value. So basically, you're betting a stock price is going to go up/down past a specific price by a certain date.

I know exactly how you feel. The older I get, the worse the loss feels, because it just seems like on top of the actual loss, I have less time to work with.

I actually was planning on that until the first massive spike up. I was busy at work and couldn't play that. Was hoping to get $1000 on a put and call each, but my work delayed me from accessing my laptop until the meeting already started.

I'm gonna laugh if next rate hike they do 75 points and completely reverse back in the opposite direction. I likely won't be trading next one, but I'll monitor it just to see how the markets react. I swear the markets just rally on nothing/bad news lately only to come back down after puts get fucked.

To be fair, I made $40k in short term plays originally. After taxes, I took out about about $15k to keep with my savings and left another $13k in my account to keep trading and brought it up to $20k this year only to just lose it. I still have $35k in my bank, but that's money not to be touched.

One can only hope!

Much appreciated! I need to save up in the meantime, maybe in several months or a year I'll be able to come back and start again. Best of luck to you as well!

I was mostly basing it off what I was hearing from the meeting today and how J Powell was saying that they weren't looking to slow down yet because they've seen before what early easement does. How they will remain persistent and how it looks like inflation isn't quite under control to their liking, and definitely felt like bearish sentiment. Plus the massive spikes occurring before the meeting even started on top of more spikes as he was making the statements, it just felt completely illogical that the prices were going so parabolic. So I would buy more each time, especially since this exact scenario occurred last time. Only it didn't crash the same way after the meeting concluded.

Now I'm just gonna need to sit out for a long while until I can save some money on the side to start putting back into my account. By then, who knows how the markets will have changed. I guess I'll just be an observer in the meantime.

Calls would be the opposite this time around since I bought puts the past couple times. Technically it would have worked the first had I held them until near the end of the day. This time it seems calls were the better choice and my puts were fucked. But I really don't have any money anymore except for about $300. And I'm now in full budget mode after this. I can't afford to lose anything big past what I've already lost.

Same here. Luckily I bought gifts already for close family. But now I'm on full budget mode. I won't be able to afford anymore spending for a long while after this.

Very true about the irrational/solvent issue.

But on the other point, I have cut losses early only for markets to reverse, and held longer than I should have only for the stocks to just continue dropping to oblivion. Doesn't matter if it's blue chips, growth stock, or etfs. It keeps hitting me in the worst ways. Definitely an irrational market.

I imagine if I were to buy in now with the bullish sentiment, some new bad news would come out to kill profits

Seriously. I couldn't believe it last time, before the meeting, it launched up, and during all the negative news, it kept rising. Even when it finally dropped down, option values refused to go up, and I sold for the loss so I would at least have still $10k incase they expired. Only for it to finally drop way past my strike price after I sold and would have put me at around $65-70k.

Today's action felt like a repeat, and I even waited until the first couple spikes up before buying. It always feels like the markets are just here to shake us all down. It definitely takes a toll on one's sanity

Both times was on QQQ. Honestly my next move would have probably been on Dec. 14th for the next rate hike meeting. Probably $1k in call options half an hour before the meeting because it keeps jumping before each meeting lately.