Never heard from her again. Lost everything from what I hear. At the time I felt bad, real bad. I vowed that I would, if I ever got a chance, work hard to explain to people the evils of margin. I have preached against margin ever since, allowing that only professionals should be using it, and then only in certain instances when the moment is right.
Leverage is a scary thing when stocks go bad.
But then times got easy. People started making all kinds of money in the market. And the margin flowed like wine, like that cheap Almaden wine that they used to serve at parties when I was a journalist, or maybe that undrinkable Soave Bollo. If you kept talking about the evils of margin you sounded like one of those William Jennings Bryan types, arguing against the cross of a gold standard, or Pitchfork Ben Tillman, talking populist gibberish. All spring I could barely read my email, because so much of it accused me of wrecking the bull and seeing risks when they weren't there, etcetera.