My name is Cate, and I am a failed commodities trader. I have been trading commodities for 14 years, but yesterday, after getting an email (one of many I’ve received in the last year) notifying me I was on margin call, I could no longer afford to replenish my account, and was forced to liquidate, putting me well below the required minimum. So that’s it. I am now about as low as I can get in my career.

Now let’s talk some numbers quick. I started trading when I was 23; I am now 37. I have 3 brothers, 1 sister, 1 husband, 2 children under 3, 1 chocolate lab, 1 mortgage, 1 car payment, and 2 empty bottles of wine on my kitchen counter that I absolutely bodied after my day yesterday. On November 24th, 2021 , I had a YTD income of ~600k+, and a similar sized trading account. By end of day November 26th, 2021, I had 180k in my trading account. By December 31st, I had 100k in my trading account. You see the trend here, right? The trend…was not my friend.

I was able to tap into some funds to replenish my account a few times, and I had a few good streaks, but then I would lose, and lose big, and I just kept on in that same pattern of winning some, then losing a lot more. I now have ~10k in my trading account, of which the minimum requirement is 50k. I have no more funds to tap into, and, I….am a fucking degenerate.

Okay! So now that that’s out there, now what? Who the fuck cares that this girl lost such an exorbitant amount of money so quickly and recklessly? No one (well, except for my very worried husband, of course, and probably my super proud parents). Why is this chick carrying on about it? Welp! I just can’t go out like that. I. Really. Just. Fucking. Can’t. So I am going to completely start over. I am going to wipe out everything I *thought* I knew about trading, and *very* humbly begin again from the muddy ground up. And being that I have a degree in English, and absolutely no other career choices to fall back on, I am going to write a blog about starting over, because everything I’ve read about freelance writing (the only thing I can think of pursuing should I fail once again) recommends writing a blog to build a writing portfolio. Two birds, etc. And being that absolutely no one is going to read it, it is going to be open, honest, maybe inappropriate at times (I am not sugar and spice, as my brother used to tell people when he introduced me), and, I’m guessing, a very, VERY, slow burn. So stick around! Just kidding, no one is reading this, and I hate when people say that.