The Dark Side of Trading: How to Protect Yourself From Big Losses & Emotional Damage 馃挃馃搲

19 Oct 2025 路 11 min

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Episode Title

The Dark Side of Trading: How to Protect Yourself From Big Losses & Emotional Damage 馃挃馃搲

Hosts

  • Rashad Bilal
  • Ian Dunlap

Episode Overview In this episode of "Market Mondays," Rashad and Ian explore the dramatic fallout from a significant single-day liquidation in the crypto market, spurred by a tweet from Donald Trump. The discussion highlights the risks and emotional toll associated with high-stakes trading, alongside essential strategies for managing risk and protecting one's mental health.

Key Topics Discussed

  1. Market Reaction to Trump's Tweet
  2. The episode opens with a review of how Trump's social media post triggered a sharp decline in both the stock and crypto markets, marking the largest single-day liquidation in crypto history.
  1. Suspicious Hedge Trade
  2. An alleged hedge trade turned $20 million into $80 million within hours, raising questions about market manipulation and the ethics of trading.
  1. The Human Cost of Trading
  2. The tragic story of a crypto trader who lost $40 million and subsequently took his own life is shared. This highlights the severe emotional and psychological ramifications of trading, especially under margin and leverage.
  1. Understanding Margin and Leverage
  2. An explanation of how margin trading works and what triggers a margin call. The risks associated with high leverage are emphasized, including the rapid loss of capital during market downturns.
  1. Mental Health and Trading
  2. The hosts stress the importance of mental health in trading. They discuss historical parallels, including the Great Depression, to illustrate the psychological impact of significant financial losses.
  1. Risk Management Strategies
  2. Tips for trading safely include:
  3. Understanding and managing risk.
  4. Separating trading accounts from long-term investment accounts.
  5. Limiting the number of trades per year to mitigate risk.
  6. Utilizing time as an asset in investment strategies.
  1. Competing Against Institutional Traders
  2. Insights on the challenges faced by everyday investors when competing against hedge funds and institutional traders with greater resources and information.
  1. Volatility Management
  2. The episode concludes with a discussion on how to handle market volatility smartly. The hosts advocate for maintaining separate accounts for different trading strategies and using time effectively as a tool to navigate market fluctuations.

Key Takeaways

  • Emotional Risks: High-stakes trading can lead to severe emotional distress and even tragic outcomes. It's crucial to maintain mental health while investing.
  • Risk Awareness: Investors need to be conscious of the risks associated with margin trading and should adopt strategies that prioritize safety.
  • Importance of Education: New and experienced traders alike should continuously educate themselves on market mechanics and trading philosophy to make informed decisions.
  • Mental Guardrails: The significance of setting mental and operational boundaries in trading practices cannot be overstated to avoid devastating losses.

Conclusion This episode serves as a sobering reminder of the potential dark side of trading. Rashad and Ian provide valuable insights and advice for anyone involved in trading or investing, emphasizing the need for caution, education, and mental well-being in the financial markets.

Watch, learn, and invest smarter!

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Transcript

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0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:32I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Joel. and Matt from HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

1:15That's right. Yeah, each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to HowToMoney on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, all my people. What's up? It's Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the one and only A$AP Rocky. He reflects on his journey from Harlem roots to global icon status and discovering the hip-hop origin of his name. The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the bucket-hat Kangol join on.

1:50I'm possibly like, that's Rakim. That's who you named after. I just was like, damn the f***ing f***ing swag. Swag. Listen to the Questlove show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. A lot of people think podcasts about work are boring. And sure, they definitely can be. But understanding a professional's routine shows us how they achieve their success little by little, day after day. It's like banking with PNC Bank. It might seem boring to save, plan, and make calculated decisions with your bank, but keeping your money boring is what helps you live a more happily fulfilled life.

2:33PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association member, FDIC. what we could talk about now i guess if you want to jump into that part is like uh you know the 80 million um situation allegedly so what they they said is that you know obviously when trump um he made the the true social post on friday and that made the stock market uh fall very very sharply but it also made the crypto market um have a major pullback it was actually the largest liquidation in crypto history for a single day and um allegedly uh there was a 20 million dollar hedge that was put in around an hour before he um he made that tweet and that 20 million dollar that turned into 80 million dollars very quickly now what's even more suspicious is that the account was opened just for that it wasn't an existing account it was opened just for that um and then i think it was closed shortly after that closes close it out after shortly after that so 20 turn to 80 once the um that's a hell of a flip the markets fell and uh and the bitcoin fell but then also a lot you know unfortunately there was um at least one situation where somebody had committed suicide yeah now most people will say like well why would somebody commit suicide just wait like i mean i just waited out but um and it's something that we haven't really talked about a lot but you know when you trade on margin or you use a high level of leverage in your trading um what happens is that you can get cashed out um and apparently i guess this was a big time crypto trader and apparently he he was heavily leveraged on his on one of his trades and they said he lost 40 million dollars um and i guess that led him to commit suicide so this is the dark side shout out to alex energy you know he had mentioned that maybe we should talk about this on blackout but i think it's appropriate even on market monday because it is an investment conversation and it is it does highlight the dark side of trading for sure um where you can lose a lot of money if you don't know what you're doing or if something goes you know opposite favor so um the mental health aspect of it is extremely important because this goes back to the 1920s the great depression when people were jumping out of windows this is not new last stockbrokers that jumped out of windows in the 1920s.

5:20So when we're talking about investing and we're talking about trading, we also have to put mental guardrails up and then also just safety precautions in your investment strategy and your trading strategy because, yeah, when things don't go your way, you could potentially fall into a deep depression you could go into a dark space you could lose a lot of money you can lash out at people worst case scenario like what happened last week you could end up hurting yourself um so yeah the dark side of trading you want to talk about that yeah for sure um and futures you can have five to one ten to one leverage is number one is the reason why i say you should only take one to 12 trades per year to mitigate risk.

6:13But there's a couple of things you have to look at on crypto and any leveraged asset. A, if you're going overseas to have 100 to 1 leverage, it can go against you. Secondly, the part that isn't talked about enough is when you're down, or let's say the market is bleeding down how it was Friday, even if you have a stop loss in place, you can continue to bleed past your stop loss. I have four or five people messaging me like, hey, I'm trying to go long in this position. I can't. And then a few others said, well, I'm past my stop loss. What do I do? And I'm like, you have to call your broker. Because at that point, there's nothing you can do.

6:51That's why we say trading has considerable risk. And the upside of it is that you can make a ton of money. I'm talking$2 to$10 to$15 million in a good day. Oh, we saw that. It's a tale of two stories, right? Yep. The one guy leveraged and off the leverage made$60 million in one day. Somebody else lost$40 million in one day. And lost his life. And the other part is when you're trading, you're not just competing against the best traders in the world. You're competing against the best hedge funds and now people who may have intellectual sources that you do not have and governmental relationships that you may not have and a broker doesn't care either way.

7:31We were talking before we started. Martin Scarelli, who got caught up in that pharmacy scandal a few years ago, who bought the Wu-Tang rights. He was down$28 million to$22 million the week before. And JP, it's on YouTube and JP Morgan's calling his line like, hey, you got to figure something out to wire this money in. So be careful if you're trading on leverage, if a profit factor is not 15 or higher. So for every dollar you put into the market, you're able to get 15 out. Don't trade on leverage. And this is a lot of times, even when it comes to newer stocks, or I even had a brother this weekend ask me like, well, why won't you talk about some of the quantum stocks?

8:08I'm like, the platform is too big for me to tell you to invest in something that they have even said privately is not going to be the leader of quantum. The upside is always the immense amount of money that you can make. But when you are in the hole 40 million, that kid didn't have somebody he can call and say, let me get a bridge loan for 25 million so I can work my way out of the hole. He can't just run to another country and escape the problem. And even when you're down that much, some brokers won't even let you open up another account to trade your way out of it. Trading has considerable risk.

8:41Please be careful. Please protect your mental health and don't over leverage in trading. God rest his soul. Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's tragic. um but i'm glad we're speaking about it because all the things that shadi mentioned are true if you're new to this it can become daunting it can become depressing um and it can feel overwhelming it's margin is something that we don't talk about because i don't think any of us actually use margin it's not something that i do a future but that's why i say you got to limit the number of trades you take per year so people even just need to know how how it actually works right and so margin is borrowed money it's borrowed money from the brokerage and they you are allowed to use that up to a certain extent or a certain point and when you see when it's stocks are appreciating futures are appreciate option appreciation it's great right you're making the money you're making the money the problem is when you see a day like friday happens and it's a drastic pullback right those margin calls happen very quick and the margin call saying hey we want our i want my bread and they click in very very quickly right hit a certain threshold and we want our money back the first thing they're going to ask is hey you need to put more money into your account or you need to liquidate all of your assets yep now you might have put that margin call on a certain position but it looks at your entire portfolio to get its money back right so if you're on a brokerage they make a margin call and it's not inside of that call.

10:14They're going to look how to liquidate all of your portfolio. That you've been holding for five years. And that's why you need to separate the trading account from your long-term investment account. That's where I was going. That's where I was going. It's the reason why you have separate accounts, separate type of trading. So for me, it was three accounts. I have my long-term holds, stocks, I have some indexes in another account. Then I have an options account, all three different brokerages. I don't mix the money up. The other thing is time. We always talk about using time as an asset, especially in trading, which is why we talk five to 10 years or, you know, for an eternity.

10:51If you're holding some of these companies or or you're buying yourself time in terms of leaps and options. We always want to use that because the volatility is going to happen. Volatility is actually needed. Right. So we can have better entry points. instance earners what's up you ever walk into a small business and everything just works like the checkout is fast the receipts are digital tipping is a breeze and you're out the door before the line even builds odds are they're using square we love supporting businesses that run on square because it just feels seamless whether it's a local coffee shop a vendor at a pop-up market or even one of our merch partners square makes it easy for them to take payments manage inventory and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system.

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12:59I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Joel and Matt from HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.

13:40That's right. Yeah, each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, all my people. What's up? It's Questlove. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with the one and only ASAP Rocky. He reflects on his journey from Harlem roots to global icon status and discovering the hip-hop origin of his name. The ledge was on the TV. Rakim had the bucket hat Kangol join on.

14:15I'm possibly like, that's Rakim. That's who you named after. I just, damn, that f***er got swag. Listen to the Questlove Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us anymore. Okay, great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time. That's so funny. I know. So I try to butch it up for kids so they're not confused.

14:53Yeah, but you're butching it up. It's basically like Dory's Day. No, I turn into Bea Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

From the publisher

Welcome to another insightful Market Mondays clip! In this powerful discussion, hosts Rashad Bilal and Ian Dunlap dive deep into one of the most dramatic moments in recent financial history: the largest single-day liquidation in crypto. Prompted by a headline-making social post from Donald Trump, the markets saw a massive fall鈥攂oth in stocks and crypto鈥攖riggering a whirlwind of reactions, trades, and consequences. *What鈥檚 Inside This Clip?*

  • *$20M to $80M Trade:* Get the inside scoop on the suspicious hedge trade that reportedly netted $80 million within hours. Was it luck, timing, or something more?
  • *The Human Cost of Trading:* Learn how margin and leverage can quickly turn profits into devastating losses. Hear the tragic story of a crypto trader who lost $40 million and, sadly, his life鈥攁 serious reminder of the emotional dangers behind high-stakes investing.
  • *Trading Safely:* Ian and Rashad break down why risk management, mental health, and account separation are essentials for every investor. They reflect on history鈥攆rom the Great Depression to present day鈥攅mphasizing the importance of putting safety and mental guardrails first.
  • *Margin Calls Explained:* This clip offers a plain-English rundown on how margin works, what triggers a margin call, and how it can impact your entire investment portfolio. Learn why separating trading from long-term investments is a crucial safety measure.
  • *Competing With the Best:* Ian shares advice on what it鈥檚 actually like trading against hedge funds, institutions, and experts with far-reaching networks鈥攁nd why most everyday investors should avoid over-leveraging.
  • *Volatility & Timing:* Discover why market volatility isn鈥檛 always something to fear, but should be managed through smart techniques like holding separate accounts and using time wisely in your investment strategy.

This Market Mondays clip is a must-watch for anyone involved in trading or investing鈥攚hether you鈥檙e new or experienced. The team brings their trademark honesty and clarity to tough topics, reminding viewers that while the upside in markets can be huge, the risks are real and must not be ignored. *If you鈥檙e thinking about trading with leverage, or just want more insight into how fast things can change, this clip is for you. Tune in and learn how to protect your portfolio鈥攁nd your peace of mind.* --- *Watch, learn, and invest smarter.* #MarketMondays #Crypto #TradingRisk #MentalHealth #MarginCalls #InvestmentSafety #Finance #StockMarket #CryptoLiquidation #RiskManagement #Investing #FinancialLiteracy --- Like, comment, and subscribe for weekly financial wisdom and market breakdowns!

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