GM. This is Dumb Money, the only financial newsletter with a 100% loss rate.
Jobs day. The September payrolls report drops in a few hours. Some people prepared by reading the consensus forecast. Others prepared by loading up on weekly options and praying.
You can guess which group made today's newsletter.
Here's what we've got today:
🏆 A semiconductor bet that needed one announcement. It never came.
📉 Cannabis calls on earnings day. The vibes were not enough.
⚡ 50x leverage on an altcoin from a Telegram group. Liquidated in 19 minutes.
🍪 The best cope from today's comment sections.
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| TODAY'S DAMAGE REPORT 📊 | |||||
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Your Download Link Will Expire
If you still haven't downloaded my free "Safe Trade Options Formula" guide...
...please take a few seconds and download it right now before your new temporary download link expires.
I eventually plan to charge money for this training, so do yourself a favor and download it now...
That way, no matter what it costs in the future, you'll have a free copy on your computer.
Make sense?
LOSS OF THE DAY 🏆
Every day we crown one person who made the worst financial decision on the internet.
Today's winner spent six figures on a rumor. A rumor from a Discord server with 340 members and a logo made in MS Paint.
Here's the setup. A post circulated on r/wallstreetbets claiming AMD was about to announce a $14 billion AI infrastructure deal with Microsoft. The source? A screenshot of a screenshot of a deleted LinkedIn post.
The post had no link. No filing. No confirmation from either company.
u/chipset_to_the_moon read it on Monday. By Tuesday he had bought 400 AMD $170 weekly call contracts at $3.46 per share. Total cost: $138,400.
For context: that is a year's salary for the median American household. On weekly options. Expiring Friday.
He needed AMD to jump 9% in four trading days. AMD has done that exactly once in the past two years.
The announcement never came. AMD closed at $158.12 on expiry day. Every contract expired worthless.
He took out a personal line of credit to fund half the trade.
The post he based his trade on was deleted by Wednesday. The Discord server went private by Thursday.
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TOTAL RETURN -$138,400.00 ▼ $138,400.00 (-100%) All Time 1D 1W 1M 3M ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"$138K on AMD weeklies. The deal was supposed to be announced this week." Saw a DD post about a rumored $14B Microsoft AI deal. Source was a deleted LinkedIn post screenshot. Bought 400 weekly calls expiring Friday. The announcement never happened. Contracts expired worthless. I funded half of it with a personal line of credit. "The risk/reward was too good to pass up." The Discord where the DD came from went private on Thursday. Can't even find the original post anymore.
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| Here's how the rumor traveled: A college senior posted speculation on LinkedIn. It got screenshotted and shared to a 340-member Discord. From there to a Telegram group. Then to WSB, where it was tagged "confirmed leak." Four hops. Zero verification. $138,400 in losses from one post. |
The kid who posted the original LinkedIn take had 28 followers. He was speculating. By the fourth reshare, speculation had become conviction.
That's how six-figure losses are built. Not with bad math. With bad sourcing.
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TODAY'S CASUALTIES 💀
Not everybody can be Loss of the Day. But these two gave it a real shot.
Let's run through the tape.
Casualty #1: The Rescheduling Dreamer
Cannabis stocks have been the financial equivalent of edging for three years. Always about to break out. Never actually breaking out.
u/weed_stocks_420 bought 200 TLRY $12 call contracts at $2.60 each. Total premium: $52,000.
His thesis: federal rescheduling was imminent. The DEA was going to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. He read it in a Substack with 400 subscribers.
One problem: TLRY reported earnings the same week. Revenue missed by 11%. Guidance got cut.
The stock dropped 38% in two sessions, from $10.40 to $6.45.
His $12 calls were already out of the money when he bought them. After the earnings miss, they weren't even in the same zip code.
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TOTAL RETURN -$52,000.00 ▼ $52,000.00 (-100%) All Time 1D 1W 1M 3M ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Rescheduling is coming. The earnings don't matter." Put $52K into TLRY $12 calls. Earnings came out the same week. Revenue missed by 11%. Stock dropped 38%. Calls went to zero. Top comment: "You bought OTM calls on a cannabis stock the week of earnings. That's not investing, that's a donation."
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$52,000. Gone. The rescheduling timeline? Still TBD. Just like it was last year. And the year before that.
Every rescheduling trade has the same structure. The thesis is right on a five-year horizon and catastrophically wrong on a five-day one.
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Casualty #2: The Telegram Alpha Enjoyer
This one lasted 19 minutes.
u/avax_maxi_99 found a Telegram group called "Whale Signals Alpha." The group had 12,000 members and a pinned message that read "100% win rate last 30 days."
The signal: go long AVAX. 50x leverage.
He deposited $43,000 and opened the position at $22.80. Total notional exposure: $2.15 million.
At 50x leverage, a 2% move wipes you out. AVAX dropped 3.2% in 19 minutes. Liquidated.
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POSITION VALUE -$43,000.00 ▼ LIQUIDATED - 19 MIN HELD 15M 1H 4H 1D ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Quick math on 50x leverage: Your $43,000 controls a $2.15 million position. A 2% move against you erases 100% of your margin. That is not a trade. That is a coin flip where tails costs you $43,000 and heads pays you lunch. |
The Telegram group deleted the signal 14 minutes after posting it. By evening, "Whale Signals Alpha" had rebranded to "Crypto Education & News."
He posted the liquidation receipt with the caption: "at least I learned something." What he learned cost $43,000 and took 19 minutes. A YouTube video would have been free and taken 10.
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BITE-SIZED COPIUM FOR THE ROAD 🍪
The best part of any loss thread isn't the screenshot. It's the comments section.
Here are today's greatest hits.
| • | "AMD will still announce the deal. I'm early, not wrong." Brother, your contracts expired. You can't be early to something that already ended. - u/still_loading_copium |
| • | "It's not a loss, it's tuition." $138,000 is an Ivy League education. You got a Discord server with a clip art logo. - u/expensive_lessons_only |
| • | "50x is fine if you have conviction." Conviction is not a risk management strategy. It is the thing people say 19 minutes before the liquidation. - u/leverage_was_a_mistake |
| • | "The Telegram group has a great track record." Had. Past tense. And the track record was self-reported by the person who just deleted the signal. - u/trust_but_verify_never |
Translation: the copium harvest is in. The yields are enormous. The self-awareness remains at zero.
See you tomorrow. New losses, fresh copium, same dosage.
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