GM. This is Dumb Money — rounding up the internet's biggest Ls so you don't make them yourself.
Today a man bet his year's savings that the stock market would crash before 4pm. It did not crash before 4pm. His savings, however, did.
Three traders. Three different asset classes. $258,000 in combined losses across index options, SPAC warrants, and a covered call strategy that was anything but safe.
Here's what we've got today:
🏆 $187,400 in 0DTE SPY puts. Gone by 2pm. On a Monday.: $187,400
📉 50,000 SPAC warrants. Company delisted. Warrants worth $0.02.: $61,000
⚡ Covered calls on a defense AI stock. Stock ripped 8%. Premium didn't cover it.: $9,600
🍪 The best cope from today's comment sections.
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| TODAY'S DAMAGE REPORT 📊 | |||||||||
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Where should you invest $100 right now?
Elon Musk just invented and patented this new AI technology…
And he's predicting it will launch a NEW industry that will grow more than 7 million percent in the coming years.
Even if he's only 10% right, that would still be enough to grow $100 into more than $700,000.
LOSS OF THE DAY 🏆
Every day we crown one person who made the worst financial decision on the internet.
Today's winner lost $187,400. In four hours and twenty-five minutes. On options that were designed to expire the same day he bought them.
Here's the setup. u/macro_chad_69 woke up on a Monday and decided the stock market was going to crash. Not next week. Today. Before the closing bell.
His evidence? A tweet from @recessionwatch2026. An account with 340 followers. The tweet said the CPI print had been leaked.
It had not been leaked. The account had posted the same tweet four Mondays in a row.
He loaded $187,400 into same-day SPY $558 puts at 9:47am.
The market opened flat. Then it drifted up. By noon his puts were down 52%.
At 1:15pm the Fed Chair made routine comments at a conference. The market rallied 0.8% in 45 minutes.
By 2:12pm every contract was worth zero. Cost per minute held: $708.
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DAY P&L -$187,400.00 ▼ EXPIRED WORTHLESS — 0DTE 9A 10A 12P 2P 4P | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Source: u/macro_chad_69's last refresh before accepting defeat |
"turns out CPI didn't leak" Bought $187K in 0DTE SPY puts at 9:47am because a Twitter account with 340 followers said CPI leaked. The account posts this every Monday. I did not check. Market went up. Puts went to zero by 2pm. Cost per minute: $708. Top comment: "You paid $187K to learn that random Twitter accounts don't have classified economic data."
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| Quick explainer on 0DTE options: These are contracts that expire the same day you buy them. Time decay accelerates exponentially in the final hours. A 0.8% move against you can vaporize the entire position in minutes. They are the financial equivalent of a match in a fireworks factory. |
He posted a follow-up three hours later asking if 0DTE losses are tax deductible. They are. At $3,000 per year, he'll finish writing this one off in 2088.
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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 SPAC Warrant Whisperer
u/spac_whisperer_99 found a de-SPAC EV company called $CHRGR. Electric vehicle charging stations. Or so the pitch deck claimed.
The company had zero revenue. Zero charging stations. The team was the founder and his college roommate.
An influencer with 11,000 followers and a bio that said "SPAC hunter" pumped it. His track record was four previous picks. All four delisted.
Our guy bought 50,000 warrants at $1.24 each. That's $62,000 on a company with no product.
Two weeks later, $CHRGR announced it was voluntarily delisting from Nasdaq. Translation: they ran out of money and the listing fees were the last thing they could cut.
The warrants dropped from $1.24 to $0.02. A 98.4% decline. Total loss: $61,000.
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The influencer who pumped it has since changed his bio to "angel investor." His angels are all underwater.
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Casualty #2: The Theta Gang Defector
u/theta_gang_4_life sold covered calls on 800 shares of PantheonAI at a $178 strike. He'd been doing it for months.
Free money, he called it.
Then PantheonAI landed a massive new defense AI contract.
The stock jumped 8% in three sessions. From $172 to $186.
His 800 shares got called away at $178 while the stock was at $186. He collected $2,400 in premium. He missed $6,400 in upside.
One problem: he didn't stop there. He bought the shares back at $186 to "sell more calls at the top."
The stock slid. He panic-sold at $179 on a red day.
Total damage across the assignment, the FOMO rebuy, and the panic exit: $9,600.
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NET P&L -$9,600.00 ▼ PNTH — Assignment + FOMO Rebuy 1D 1W 1M 3M ALL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Source: u/theta_gang_4_life, rethinking the whole theta thing |
| What are covered calls? You own shares and sell someone the right to buy them at a set price. You collect a small premium. But if the stock rips past your strike, your shares get taken and you miss the upside. The premium is a ceiling on your gain. |
He sold covered calls to make $2,400 a month. He lost 4 months of premium in one week. That's the part worth understanding.
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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.
Here are today's greatest hits.
| • | "It's not a loss, it's tuition." That is the most expensive tuition in the country and the diploma is a screenshot of a zero balance. — u/copium_dealer_2026 |
| • | "The warrants still have intrinsic value." The company delisted. The warrants have the intrinsic value of a coupon for a store that closed. — u/warrant_bag_holder |
| • | "Covered calls are risk-free income." They are income until the stock moves. Then they are regret with a premium attached. — u/theta_grief_counselor |
| • | "The CPI leak was real, the market just didn't react to it yet." The market did react. It went up. That was the reaction. — u/fed_truther_420 |
Translation: the copium supply is at all-time highs. The denial is flowing freely. And not a single lesson was learned today.
See you tomorrow. New losses, fresh copium, same dosage.
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