'Stock Guy' - a short story

Tom works in IT.. enjoys his work, & his time with friends... while they were chatting one day, he heard one of his friends talk something about the stock market. he didn't care much about it... then another day 'stocks' came in another friend's conversation, he was bragging about how much money he made the other day.. this happened couple of times. Hmm... Tom thought 'Man, I think I am missing out on it & MUST try my LUCK at it!!'. Sure enough, he goes and opens a trading account.

He asked for 'expert' advice from his friends, and he gets plenty of tips on 'hot stocks'.. advice on how to make quick bucks easily. Tom is all excited & follows the advice, makes few trades and his investments are luckily in profits. He made few trades based on 'secret' expert advices from his friends.

Hmm.. now Tom gained confidence and he thinks this is easy and he can handle it. He made few trades himself and made some money... aha.. Tom now considers himself an 'expert', he often mentions his investments & stock markets in his conversations. This goes on for sometime, and he started to 'loose' the excitement and slowly started to try margin trading, options, etc. Now, that is something good & exciting. Tom starts with small amounts & makes some quick money, hmmm.. he liked it and tries his luck with huge amounts. With help from the brokers and multiple accounts opened with different traders, he had a huge margin available. Everything was going well, brokers were happy and they talked every day. In fact, Tom was one of their 'best' client, he had special privileges and yes, he enjoyed it!!

One day it happened, market crashed a huge percentage, he was now in huge loss. And to make matters worse, the crash kept continuing. Now our Tom was in deep trouble, he was being chased by the same brokers to get their money. He had no where to go & took multiple loans to pay brokers, he knew that it will takes years of his earnings to pay for all his debts. Lost the glamour of 'stocks', in fact he hated stocks. Tom finally took that decision - NO MORE STOCKS!! He does not even want to hear about stocks!!! All he wants was his life back.

Its been couple of years now, all his debts are almost paid...

Tom is still in IT, enjoys his work & his time with friends... while they were chatting one day, he heard one of his friend talk something about stock market.....

Will he go back to the state where he started and repeat the same mistakes, or will he decide not to gamble, but to study and invest for long term or will he totally avoid stock? Let's wait and see..

Are you today at any stage of Tom's story?? Now that you already know the story, do you really want to experience it??