Rate your emotional financial pain due to the events the last month.

I have zero in stock market.

So no pain.

I told my parents to pull everything out about 6-8 months ago. Saved them so much money....

No pain. I have zero invested in the stock market at the moment. The investments I do have actually benefit from hard economic times and a credit crunch so all is good.

I actually think this will help me. I'm was planning on getting back into the stock market in early 2009 so I'll have a lot of cash to buy bargains with. I'm also looking at getting a new car in the spring which will probably cost less because of this. Canada has avoided the real estate issues unfortunately but hard economic times usually means less expensive consumer goods so again a plus.

Awesome. When are you going to suggest they get back in?

I don't know anything about the stock market so I have no idea what to buy or when to go back in.

I just know that as passive investors, they were going to get raked over the coals if they didn't pull out.

I'm 28, have just under 50% of my networth in cash. I'll survive this 35-45% drop. But it still hurts to see the numbers go down.

Plus I'm offsetting some losses doing some short selling, so I've been able to buy a little using OPM.

I have a lot invested in the markets but generally don't worry about it and could care less. I feel like as poker players we have a much different perspective on this type of thing than your average person though, I never got all bent out of shape over downswings and don't see why I should over swings in the market.

pain isn't real, neither is money.

I been making windfall profits since August 2007...
And have had 4 months with net profits > $150,000 net...
And this month I'm at about $80,000 net already.

So it's the luckiest thing ever...
I've become a millionaire "overnight"...
After grinding $100K/year for 15 years.

Just like a band with a hit record...
After 15 years of playing for drunks in dives.

When you are running a ** sophisticated ** hedging operation...
Maybe 50 stocks long and 50 stocks short...
On $1,000,000 capital leveraged 2:1...
And grinding $2,000/day with bid/ask spreads of $0.05 to $0.10...

Then suddenly all ** hell breaks loose **...
And those bid/ask spreads go to $0.20 to $0.30 or more...
Your volume soars and profits can be 5-10 times normal.

Volatility is a professional hedger's friend.

But I spend my weekends working on poker like a fool...
Instead of rapidly building my hedge fund.
Oh well... I suppose I can do what the **** I want.

Short-term trading is a Zero Sum Game... so when you here about some idiot "hedge fund" manager blowing up for $1 billion... a bunch of smart, disciplined guys just carved up that $1 billion.

I blinked and MMM went from 74 to 56. It's been interesting...

The majority of my investments have been in gold and farmland, not only over the last month, but the past two years.

Net worth has never been higher.

I sold off pretty much all of my stock holdings back in early June to put a down payment on my condo, so while I haven't felt much pain stock-wise, my condo is probably only worth a couple bucks at this point, so it's all the same.

I've been in cash since March, luckiest sell in my life. I can hardly believe the prices on stocks and bonds. Even high grade corporates have some incredible yields. Unbelievable. Actually I'm a happy camper.

i decided to start speculating again in the stock market. one month ago. ywah... and I bought morgan stanley options

yeah.....
I'm down exactly the amount I deposited...

The good news...only like 20% in the market right now, most of it is in my bankroll or my condo.

The other good news...the American dollar is on the rise which means living in Canada got a little easier. 3 months ago my $5k US checks from Full Tilt were like $4950 at the bank...now they are $5600.

The bad news...just dropped 80k on a condo downpayment and even though Canada's markets are in much better shape than the US (mostly since the government is much more fiscally responsible) the real estate market is on the decline. Oh yea and my stock portfolio has completely tanked like 35%.

1 month ago I had like 50k in net savings, thanks to poker plus getting hammered in the market. I am down to my last 10k

All my cash is at FTP......

Seriously though.... nothing in the market, other than my DCB pension plan (401K to Americans). That is long-term so I'm not worried. No debt either (I rent a condo), so I'm in good shape.

Well at least if someone mugs me I won't give a ****.

I guess I will deal better with downswings in poker.

I guess I will better appreciate the value of money now.

positiveaments FTL! voted 10 btw if that wasn't clear :@

75% of my net worth in stocks. hurts pretty bad, ill say 6. If i had lost that same amount at poker it would have been 10.

I did everything wrong and put it all into 1 micro cap stock which is now trading at 1/8th what I bought it for. When all this bad news broke out it just got punished. Lol gambling.

lol wat

and you're still holding it. lol you.

~60% networth in stocks. Hurts a lot. Every single penny I've made at poker in the last year I've lost in stocks which is a pretty suckie thing to think about. I'd be so rich if I had not invested. Now we're digging into my 'real' savings which hurts even more.

this op was actually v helpful for me. i was kinda bummed that i was down >30% this yr, then i saw the op asking me to rate my emotional pain, and i realized that i dont really feel any pain at all. maybe bc stocks are <25% of my net worth.

tien, what made you say to get out 6-8 months ago?

Pretty bad but could be a lot worse. I voted 4.

My net worth is about 100K and I've probably lost about 17K in the last 12 months.

Had about 55% of net worth in the market, and about 85% of that was retirement, so I'm not too worried about the retirement stuff.

It does still change some of my short-term plans. For instance, I wasn't planning on maxing my Roth out for 2009 until April 2010, but with prices so low, I may be forced to max them out Jan. 2009. Little stuff like that. We both need new cars but may have to delay those in order to free up money for the aforementioned Roths, etc.

Was planning on buying home next August...may hold off a bit longer, may not.