It was around the summer of 2020 when I first learned about margin. I began investing with borrowed money, and at first, it worked well. In the beginning, I was definitely nervous. I started with $100K and gradually increased the amount. As a beginner, I didn’t fully understand margin equity requirements.
But I was lucky. The stock market surged as pandemic-driven financial policies brought interest rates down to zero, flooding the market with liquidity. It was an incredible time to use margin and amplify gains.
For a few months, that luck continued. My account grew from about $700K to over $2 million. Then came a sharp correction in 2021—and much of those gains disappeared. But I didn’t reduce my margin exposure.
“The market always recovers. It always goes higher.” I believed.
And for a while, that belief paid off. After several painful months, the market bounced back to new all-time highs. My gains returned, and once again, my aggressive use of margin brought my account to a few million dollars. At one point, my total portfolio reached $5 million.
It felt like a dream.
“The pain and discipline of last year is finally paying off,” I told myself.
So I waited—for more, for higher gains.
Then, in early 2022, the market crashed again.
$5M became $2M. Then $4M, then $3M. This time, I didn’t reduce my margin. I had already lived through a dramatic recovery—I believed it would happen again.
But this time was different.
The speed and severity of the crash were overwhelming. I began receiving margin calls almost every day. I was forced to close out positions. I never imagined a drop this brutal. Eventually, all my gains were gone—and I had lost much more than I started with.
By the time I fully realized the seriousness, it was too late. After clearing all margin, my account was far below my original investment.
I remember those days and nights—painful, helpless—just watching my account melt away. Everything I had worked for was vanishing. I was angry. Disappointed in myself. Miserable.
“What did I even do for the past three years?”
Everything had disappeared.
I blamed myself every single day. My hopeful thought—“Tomorrow will be better”—turned into just another day of loss and despair.
Every morning at 6:30 AM PST, I would wake up and reach for my phone to check the market. Did I get a margin call? Do I need to sell? Should I buy?
My thinking—“I must recover. I will recover.”—made me unstable. Sad. Helpless. It consumed me.
I couldn’t focus on work.
Whenever the market was red in the morning, I felt crushed.
I don’t even know how I managed to function—how I worked and got paid—because inside, I was in a very, very deep depression. A darkness I had never experienced before.
In late 2023, one Sunday, I went to church for Mass, as I usually did. But that week had been brutal—another steep crash in the market had shattered what little hope I had left for recovery. I was anxious, spiraling in thought.
“What have I done with the past three years?”
All I could think about was how I had made reckless investment decisions, lost not only money, but also my peace, my health—my life as I knew it.
I knew my mental state was deteriorating, but that morning, it got worse. I couldn’t breathe properly. I tried to calm down with YouTube videos, with music, but nothing helped. My mind was overwhelmed with shame and self-hatred. I kept thinking, “How miserable I am. How terrible I’ve become.” My head felt foggy. I was dizzy.
After just a few minutes of sitting in the pews, I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up and walked out of the church. I found myself wandering into a nearby park, trying to catch my breath—physically and emotionally.
As I walked, I kept muttering to myself:
“You stupid idiot. What have you done…”
Then, something shifted.
Amid the anger, I suddenly felt an unexpected wave of sadness—not just for what I had lost, but for myself. I gently tapped my arm with my other hand and whispered,
“You’ve been through so much. I’m sorry.”
And just like that, tears began to fall.
Eventually, in Oct 2023, after nearly a year of carrying that weight, I saw a psychiatrist for the first time in my life and began taking Sertraline.