GM. This is Dumb Money, rounding up the internet's biggest Ls so you don't make them yourself.
Binance got hacked Thursday night. $2.8 billion drained from a hot wallet.
Bitcoin slid below $79,000. And $628 million in leveraged positions were liquidated in a single hour.
Meanwhile, big tech earnings wiped out anyone who still believed in the phrase "priced in."
$228,320 in combined losses across three stories that each hurt in a different way.
Here's what we've got today:
🏆 20x long on BNB. Binance got hacked 35 minutes later.
📉 75 Amazon weekly calls. Earnings missed. Down 99.2%.
⚡ ServiceNow on 2x margin. The stock had its worst day ever.
🤣 Dumb memes from the trenches.
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| TODAY'S DAMAGE REPORT 📊 | |||||
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Your next trade needs this checklist
Before you place another trade...
...make sure you use this 5-part formula that makes every trade a SAFE trade:
Why are we giving this away?
Because we think you'll love it so much that you'll come back to us down the road for more advanced training.
Make sense?
Good Trading,
Bill Poulos
p.s. Take 5 seconds and get your free copy of the "Safe Trade Options Formula" right now before you close this email.
LOSS OF THE DAY 🏆
Every day we crown one person who made the worst financial decision on the internet.
Today's winner didn't even get to hold the position for an hour.
Thirty-five minutes. That's all it took.
Here's the setup. A trader opened a 20x leveraged long on BNB at $738.90 at 20:15 UTC on October 29.
The position was worth $2.37 million on $118,400 in collateral.
Nine minutes later, a single transaction drained $2.8 billion from a Binance hot wallet.
BNB fell 6.3% in 35 minutes. At 20x leverage, a 5% move is a 100% wipeout.
He was leveraged to the ceiling on the token of the exchange that was being robbed in real time.
Liquidation hit at $701.95. BNB kept falling to $692.32.
The $118,400 was gone before he could close the tab.
He opened the position because BNB had been "stable all week." That was the thesis.
Stability. That was it. That was the entire risk assessment.
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POSITION P&L -$118,400.00 ▼ LIQUIDATED - 35 MIN HELD 5M 15M 1H 4H ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Went 20x long on BNB because it was the most stable thing in my portfolio. Then Binance got hacked." Opened the position at $738.90. Nine minutes later the hot wallet drain started. By 20:50 UTC I was liquidated. $118,400 gone in half an hour. Top comment: "Bro leveraged the exchange and the exchange got robbed. This is art."
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| Quick math on 20x leverage: At 20x, every 1% price move equals a 20% swing on your collateral. A 5% drop wipes you out entirely. BNB fell 6.3% in 35 minutes. The exchange's own token dropped faster than the exchange could send a push notification. |
He is now posting in r/CryptoCurrency asking if Binance will compensate leveraged traders who got liquidated during the hack.
They will not.
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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 Amazon Earnings Believer
Amazon reported Q3 earnings on October 29. EPS: $1.89, missing the $1.97 consensus.
Revenue: $201.9 billion, also short.
The stock dropped 6% after hours. Then Amazon's Q4 guidance came in soft.
One problem: u/prime_day_profits had already loaded up.
75 AMZN $245 weekly calls at $10.20 each. Total outlay: $76,500.
His thesis? AWS growth would carry the quarter.
The miss would be in retail. And nobody cares about retail.
The market cared about retail. The calls went from $10.20 to $0.08.
That's a 99.2% loss. $75,900 evaporated between the earnings call and the conference Q&A.
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TOTAL RETURN -$75,900.00 ▼ $76,500.00 (-99.22%) All Time 1D 1W 1M ALL YTD | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"AWS was supposed to carry. Retail was supposed to be irrelevant. My calls are now worth eight cents." Bought 75 weeklies before earnings. AWS grew 39%. None of it mattered because the EPS missed by $0.08 and Q4 guidance was soft. Top comment: "Your calls are also worth $0.08. Symmetry."
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| Weekly options before earnings, explained: Weekly calls expire in days, not months. If the stock doesn't move in your direction fast enough, time decay eats the premium alive. Holding them through an earnings miss is like buying a lottery ticket and watching the wrong numbers get called one by one. |
Casualty #2: The ServiceNow Margin Maximizer
ServiceNow had its worst day in history on October 29. Down 27%.
A $36 billion market cap wipe in a single session.
u/saas_is_king held 120 shares at $1,050 on 2x margin. That's a $126,000 position on $63,000 in equity.
For context: a 27% drop on 2x margin is a 54% hit to your equity. His $63,000 became $28,980 by market close.
His broker issued a margin call at 11:14 AM. He didn't pick up the phone.
By the time he checked, his position had been force-sold at $766.50. Loss: $34,020.
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DAY P&L -$34,020.00 ▼ MARGIN CALL ISSUED 11:14 ET 1H 4H 1D 1W ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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His post-mortem on Reddit was four words: "SaaS was supposed to be safe."
Nothing on margin is safe. That's the whole thing about margin.
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DUMB MEMES 🤣
Every newsletter needs a meme section. Ours just hits different when you're reading it the morning after the largest crypto hack in history.
💰→📱→20x→🚨→💨→🛑 (savings → app → leverage → hack → liquidated → frozen withdrawals) |
📈→💵→📞→📉→🚫→📞 (earnings → calls → conference call → miss → worthless → margin call) |
If you laughed, you're coping. If you didn't laugh, check if your exchange still has your money.
See you tomorrow. Same losses. Different people. Exact same mistakes.
