GM. This is Dumb Money, the only financial newsletter with a 100% loss rate.
The 10/10 anniversary came and went. Markets survived. Portfolios did not.
$141K in combined losses across three stories today. One involves an airline. One involves betting against Bitcoin on its crash anniversary. One involves a coin that was literally named after getting wrecked.
Here's what we've got today:
🏆 A full send on Delta calls. The earnings were not, in fact, priced in.
📉 A 35x Bitcoin short on the 10/10 anniversary. The crash did not repeat.
⚡ A Pump.fun memecoin called $REKTOBER. You can guess what happened.
🍪 The best cope from today's comment sections.
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| TODAY'S DAMAGE REPORT 📊 | |||||
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Not SpaceX. Not Tesla. Smaller.
It's not SpaceX. It's not Tesla, Starlink or Neuralink.
You don't need an IPO allocation to own it. Anyone with a brokerage account can buy it for about $14 a share.
Yet SpaceX's name is right there in its paperwork.
Dylan Jovine believes the second wave of Space Millionaires starts December 8th... right here.
LOSS OF THE DAY 🏆
Every day we crown one person who made the worst financial decision on the internet.
Today's winner bet his entire options account on an airline. On earnings day. With weekly calls.
Here's the setup. Delta Air Lines reported Q3 2026 earnings on October 9. Wall Street expected $1.77 per share.
The options market was pricing a 6.42% move. The call-to-put ratio was 3.3 to 1. Translation: for every person hedging, three people were betting the stock would rip.
u/sky_high_returns was one of the three.
He bought 250 DAL $90 weekly call contracts at $3.60 each. That's $90,000 in premium on a single earnings play.
His thesis? Travel demand is strong. Delta always beats. The stock was going to gap to $95.
One problem: Delta posted $1.72 per share. Five cents below consensus. Then it cut full-year guidance from $6.50-$7.50 to $5.10-$5.60.
The stock dropped 5% before he finished reading the press release. His $90 strike calls opened the next morning at $0.02.
He sold what he could for $600 total. The rest expired worthless.
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TOTAL RETURN -$89,400.00 ▼ $90,000.00 (-99.33%) All Time 1D 1W 1M 3M ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"jet fuel can't melt steel hands" 250 DAL $90 weeklies at $3.60. Travel thesis. Delta always beats. Except this time Delta missed by five cents, cut guidance by 30%, and my calls opened at two cents. Top comment: "The only thing that gapped up was your losses."
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| Quick note on weekly options for non-options people: Weekly options have short-dated expirations, sometimes just days away. If they expire out of the money, you lose 100% of your premium. There is no second chance. There is no "holding through the dip." The clock runs out and your money is gone. |
Here's the thing. Delta's revenue actually came in at $17.59 billion, below estimates. The stock dropped because of both the miss and the guidance cut, driven by higher jet fuel costs.
The top line disappointed. The forward outlook was worse. And weekly options don't care about nuance.
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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 Anniversary Shorter
October 10, 2025 was the worst day in crypto history. $19 billion in liquidations. 1.6 million accounts wiped.
October 10, 2026 was the one-year anniversary. And u/crash_repeat_2026 had a thesis.
His thesis: history repeats. Same week. Same volatility. Same result. He opened a 35x short on Bitcoin at $81,800.
It did not repeat.
Bitcoin bounced from $81,800 to $83,500 over the next 38 minutes. A 2.1% move in the wrong direction.
At 35x leverage, a 2.9% move liquidates you. He didn't even make it that far. Position liquidated at $83,460. Total loss: $33,700.
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POSITION P&L -$33,700.00 ▼ LIQUIDATED - 38 MIN HELD 1H 4H 1D 1W ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"the chart looked exactly the same" 35x short BTC at $81,800 because the 10/10 anniversary was going to play out again. It did not play out again. Liquidated in 38 minutes. Top comment: "Charts don't have memories. Neither do you, apparently."
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| Quick math on 35x leverage: At 35x, every 1% move in the underlying asset moves your position 35%. A 2.9% move against you wipes out 100% of your margin. That is the distance between a coffee run and a liquidation notice. |
Casualty #2: The $REKTOBER Degen
This one barely lasted long enough to screenshot.
Someone launched a Pump.fun memecoin called $REKTOBER on October 10 to commemorate the crash anniversary. The pitch: "the official token of getting liquidated."
u/dip_buyer_supreme saw it trending. He put in $18,300.
For context: 81% of Solana memecoins analyzed on centralized exchanges have lost at least 90% of their value from their peak. Coin Metrics published that stat this week.
The token pumped 340% in the first eight minutes. Our guy was up $62,000 on paper.
Then the deployer pulled liquidity. All of it. One transaction.
$REKTOBER went from $0.0041 to $0.00000008. His $18,300 is now worth $400. Net loss: $17,900.
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TOKEN VALUE -$17,900.00 ▼ $18,300.00 (-97.81%) All Time 15M 1H 4H 1D ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The coin's Telegram channel had one message: "gm. gl." That was the whitepaper. That was the community. That was the exit strategy.
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BITE-SIZED COPIUM FOR THE ROAD 🍪
The best part of any loss thread isn't the screenshot. It's the comments section.
Here are today's greatest hits.
| • | "The guidance cut was priced in. The market just hasn't realized it yet." Sir, the market realized it at 4:01 PM when your calls went to two cents. - u/still_bullish_on_dal |
| • | "I'm not wrong, I'm just early on the short." You're not early. You're liquidated. Those are different things. - u/crash_repeat_2026 |
| • | "$REKTOBER is actually a community play. The dev will come back." The dev's Telegram has one message and zero return visits. He is not coming back. - u/dip_buyer_supreme |
| • | "At least I only lost the money I could afford to lose." That is the first responsible thing anyone has said on this list and we genuinely hope it's true. - u/risk_managed_once |
Translation: the copium harvest was abundant today. Self-awareness remains in a bear market.
See you tomorrow. New losses, fresh copium, same dosage.
