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A comment on How the Valley treats experienced people. Parent comment

Re:How the Valley treats experienced people by CydeWeys on Sunday December 30, 2018 @01:32PM (#18790562)
Sounds like the broker had to sell everything because you went below your required margin ratio. A typical margin ratio is 50%, and AAPL collapsed by more than 50% during the 2008 meltdown, so it sounds like you got margin called.

If that is indeed what happened then that's on you for buying on margin (which is inherently riskier), and no fault of the broker. If that's not what happened, and the broker executed trades without instructions from you, I hope you got them fired at minimum.

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Re:How the Valley treats experienced people by mixmastamyk on Sunday December 30, 2018 @02:20PM (#18790801)
Yes, even when making the right (though unnecessarily risky) call an unrelated third party can still show up out of the blue and ruin everything. There are more failure modes to luck than are commonly understood.
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