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I lost count. I made good money early on and then I got cocky. It was a classic case of the dunning-kruger effect. I peaked mount stupid early and thought I knew it all. Then I thought I'd leverage myself by using prop firms, blew through a lot of those before I figured out I should probably start with a demo account that didn't have rules designed to make me fail. That's when I really started learning and dialed in my strategies that worked for me and the amount of money I wanted to risk. Fortunately I had a nice nest egg to get me through the rough times. Took me a couple of years to get consistently profitable

I only blew one account early on, but it was a big one. This was before I went professional. I was trading options. The upside is obvious, tons of leverage, convexity, you can make a lot when things move your way. The downside is the part people love to pretend does not exist. If you are short the wrong stuff, the risk is basically open ended.

Up until that point it was actually going fine. I was consistent, PnL was steady, nothing crazy. Risk looked under control as long as the market behaved the way it usually does. Then you get hit by one of those half assed black swan type events. Not a full blown crisis, just enough of a volatility spike and correlation mess to break all your assumptions at once.

Liquidity disappeared right when you needed it, vols blew out, and positions that normally decay nicely suddenly started moving against you fast. Stops did not matter, hedges did not help, and everything repriced in one direction. End result was about a $279k hit, pretty much straight down.

That was the moment the lesson really stuck. Options do not kill you slowly. They work great until one day they do not, and then they take years of progress in a couple of sessions. I got that lesson early, paid for it once, and built everything after that around not being exposed to that kind of tail risk again.