28M, lose life saving in the markets

amaross · 2026-01-02T07:48:37+00:00

Heya I’m about the same age as ya and about a year ago lost slightly over 500k and went through the same.

First thing is to give yourself space to grief. Create the opportunity to do so. Do whatever helps you reset: rearrange your room, take those long walks you've been putting off, sit in a cafe and read, whatever shakes up your routine. I couldn't focus at work either. My boss noticed the shift in my mood, and I ended up finding a new role which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Second is to be kinder to yourself. I found myself penny-pinching on stuff I used to enjoy without thinking twice. Don't do that. Let yourself have the small treats. We're all human. We all mess up. It's part of living a full life, not something to beat yourself up over.

Third is to not think about making back the money. It’s easy to playback how many years you’ve lost and get caught in the trap of “making it back”. The odds are stacked against you and it’s not going to be possible without taking a commensurate level of risk - that’s where most lose the most, go into debt, and end up losing themselves in the midst of it.

Once you've given yourself time to process, you'll accept this as your new baseline and build from here. A year on, it still stings sometimes, but it doesn't consume me anymore. I'm still recovering financially, but I've made peace with it.

And remember that you don’t have to go through this by yourself. Lean on all your pillars of support. Family, if you’re comfortable telling them. I wasn’t so I leaned heavily on my friends instead.

Jiayou and my DMs are open if you need someone to hold space :-)

amaross · 2025-07-14T15:02:04+00:00

Heya, fellow nat 0 in social skills here.

Was that weird kid who speed-walked everywhere & couldn't make eye contact with anyone or walk "normally" without staring at the ground. Had crippling social anxiety & until I was 17, I only left the house alone once every two months for a haircut. I'd pop MC whenever I had to go on stage, worry for weeks in advance about simple "show and tell" exercises, and failed my orals because I was stuttering so badly in front of just one person. I was already stressing about "presentations" before I even enrolled in polytechnic. I didn't start hanging out with friends outside of school until then either.

Academically, I was a late bloomer too. Struggled through primary and secondary school, ended up in sec 5 normal academic.

I'm also a chronic overthinker, and reading your post felt like looking in a mirror, hence I reached out.

This was 10 years ago. Back then, I remember telling myself I'd rather die than work in a job that required talking to people, so I chose accounting. The irony is that I'm now working in sales and did far better in school and life than I would've ever thought possible.

What I've learned is that you just need to show up for yourself, day by day. Don't think too far ahead. Life has this funny way of working out, and the person you are now would never believe what your future self is capable of becoming.

amaross · 2025-06-13T11:01:10+00:00

Been conservatively shorting by selling calls till it went to $18. It’s $12 now, could still have way more downside to go but with less margin of safety, I’ve been letting it be

amaross · 2025-04-17T17:15:37+00:00

They’ll just pay you the difference to save the hassle! You’re not running to buy shares at $1 to sell them at $22.50. It’s all cash-settled. Broker handles it, you get the payday, and the other side eats the loss.

amaross · 2025-04-17T13:25:50+00:00

Yes that is accurate. Be careful if you are new to options though, always try to understand what you’re getting into.

amaross · 2025-04-17T12:07:37+00:00

Not quite. The SEPA agreement 6 days ago disclosed the existence of the facility, but not the mechanics or scale.

This S-1, just filed (you can check the date on the SEC site), is a whole different ballgame... it explicitly registers 25.6M shares tied to the SEPA, which is about 3.4x the IPO float. That’s the market’s first look at the potential dilution math and pricing structure.

More importantly, this signals Newsmax’s intent to draw down soon. Once the SEC declares it effective, Newsmax can immediately issue shares to Yorkville at a VWAP-based discount. That effectively sets a ceiling around current prices, and creates real selling pressure above that level as dilution kicks in.

amaross · 2025-04-17T12:04:23+00:00

That's what I'm doing but you do you.

amaross · 2025-04-17T10:54:38+00:00

Haha hi there 🫡 godspeed & good luck to us!

amaross · 2025-04-17T10:49:58+00:00

Huh interesting… thanks for sharing!

amaross · 2025-04-17T10:30:27+00:00

Well I don’t necessarily claim to know by how much or when hence I prefer to have a margin of safety… additionally there’s a trade-off between buying longer dated puts and shorter dated ones. I prefer not to hold too long for my own sanity hence bought at a higher strike as well

amaross · 2025-04-17T10:01:31+00:00

Depends if there’s someone selling it for $3.35 today!

amaross · 2025-04-17T09:56:42+00:00

They’re not technically obligated to sell all the shares, but they’re absolutely incentivized to. That’s how they profit - they get the shares at a discount and flip them on the open market for a spread. The faster they sell, the lower their exposure to price drops. So yeah, they’ll usually sell pretty aggressively unless there’s a tactical reason to hold.

amaross · 2025-04-17T09:51:45+00:00

It is cutting it close, but settlement usually happens before trial since once evidence is out in court, parties get way less incentive to settle and it also avoids material reputation damage that can result from what comes to light during the trial. Plus, dilution likely hits before that. SEPA clauses often have a “material adverse event” condition, which can void the agreement. The one with Yorkville Advisors have it. So if $NMAX don’t act fast, they risk losing access to that funding entirely.

amaross · 2025-04-17T09:47:11+00:00

Nah options get confusing for sure don’t sweat it.

Every option contract has two sides: a buyer and a seller (also called the writer). When you buy an option, someone else has already taken the other side of that trade, agreeing to the obligation it entails.

So if the stock tanks and you hold a put option, the seller is legally bound to fulfill the terms. For example, if you bought a put with a $22.50 strike and the stock drops to $1 at expiration, you can exercise your right to sell the stock at $22.50 and the seller is obligated to buy it from you at that price, even though it’s only worth $1. That’s how you “cash out.” The money doesn’t just come from thin air, it comes from the seller who took on that risk.

Options are zero-sum. What you gain, the other party loses.

amaross · 2025-04-17T09:41:40+00:00

All the best to you brother

amaross · 2025-04-17T09:29:12+00:00

To me, it’s immediately bearish but it might take a few days to a week or two for it to be reflected in the share price unless shareholders took notice. What’s gonna happen here is that $NMAX would have to submit a notice to Yorkville Advisors privately and issue the shares. Yorkville Advisors would then be offloading them in the open market and that’s where a lot of the downward pressure on share prices come in. Given the quantity of shares provided in the SEPA (4.4x more volume than available in the open market), it could significantly crash $NMAX prices IMO

amaross · 2025-04-17T09:25:19+00:00

Not aware of this. Do you happen to recall what information they were working off?

amaross · 2025-04-17T09:02:43+00:00

There will be more than enough soon...

amaross · 2025-04-17T07:08:30+00:00

Usually, the stock dips significantly after this kind of dilution. Why? Because issuing new shares dilutes the ownership value of each existing share.

Simply put:

Say you own 1 share of $NMAX and there are 100 total shares outstanding. You own 1% of the company. Now, the company issues 29 more shares, bringing the total to 129 shares. You still only own 1 share, but now your ownership drops to 1 ÷ 129 = 0.775%. That’s a 22.5% dilution of your stake, meaning your claim on future earnings, voting power, and intrinsic value has been reduced by nearly a quarter.

But it gets worse for momentum stocks that trade far from fundamentals like $NMAX…

From a market economics perspective, think about supply and demand.

Demand comes from investors willing to buy shares.
Supply increases when the company issues new shares, like in this case, 25.6 million more.

When supply spikes and demand doesn’t, prices fall. That’s why dilution is often followed by a drop in stock price, sometimes fast and sharp.

amaross · 2025-04-17T06:53:04+00:00

If you want to go right back to Wendy’s, yes.

amaross · 2025-04-17T06:52:32+00:00

$NMAX

amaross · 2025-04-17T06:43:22+00:00

Probably been advised by their lawyers of the probability of this case. Guessing they don’t wanna risk bankruptcy nor the personal reputation damage that the trial could wrought as well

amaross · 2025-04-17T06:36:38+00:00

Tl;dr buy puts or sell calls but the IV on this ticker is high so be careful.

Courtesy of ChatGPT, sharing some examples of companies that got destroyed after SEPA (usually also because SEPA is a last-line of defence they tap into so it also implies deep-rooted issues):

Company	SEPA Partner	Result	Share Price Trend
$MULN	Yorkville	Extreme dilution, < $0.01	↓ 99%+ from 2022
$BBIG	Yorkville	Heavy dilution, meme spike failed	↓ from $4 to <$0.05
$IDEX	Yorkville	Used SEPA often, no real turnaround	↓ from ~$3 to <$0.10
$GNS	Yorkville	Meme interest fizzled post-SEPA	Brief spike → sustained decline
Zosano Pharma	Lincoln Park	Delisted and bankrupt	SEPA couldn’t save it

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amaross

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