Sarah Mitchell picked up day trading during the pandemic. Within six months, she'd lost $31,000.
She was an ER nurse in Phoenix, working 12-hour shifts through the worst of COVID. Between patients, she'd check her phone. Robinhood was open. The market was moving. And everyone on TikTok said this was the easiest money they'd ever made.
So she started. Small at first — $500 here, $1,000 there. She made $2,200 in her first week trading AMC calls. She thought she'd found the answer.
"I felt like I'd been working too hard my entire life for money that was just sitting there in the market, waiting to be taken."
She opened an options account. She started following a TikTok trader who posted screenshots of six-figure gains. She began trading on her lunch breaks, in the parking lot before shifts, and at 3 AM when she couldn't sleep.
By month three, she was down $8,000. By month five, $22,000. By month six, $31,000 — money she'd been saving for a down payment on a house.
Her down payment was gone. She was still renting. And she had nothing to show for it.
She described the experience as "the loneliest financial mistake I've ever made. I couldn't tell anyone."
Source: FINRA Investor Education Foundation — "Investing During COVID-19" | Pew Research — "Pandemic Trading Surge"
The Pandemic Created 10 Million New Traders. Most of Them Lost.
Here's what Sarah — and millions like her — didn't understand:
The 2020-2021 bull market wasn't normal. It was a once-in-a-generation liquidity event fueled by stimulus checks, zero interest rates, and a Fed that was printing money at historic rates. Everything went up. And that made everyone feel like a genius.
But feeling like a genius and being one are very different things. When the market conditions normalized, the traders who'd learned their "skills" in the easiest market in history got crushed.
Sarah wasn't buying options because of careful analysis. She was buying them because someone on social media told her to. She had no entry criteria. No exit plan. No position sizing rules. No risk management whatsoever.
She was gambling. She just didn't know it yet.
FINRA reported that new investors who opened accounts during the pandemic were significantly more likely to trade options and significantly more likely to report losses than pre-pandemic investors.
No system. No edge. Just a phone, an app, and a dangerous amount of confidence.
The TikTok Trader She Followed? He Was Losing Too.
Three months after Sarah blew up her account, the TikTok trader she'd been following — the one with the six-figure screenshot gains — posted a video admitting he'd lost over $400,000.
The screenshots had been real. But they were cherry-picked. He showed the winners. He hid the losers. And behind the highlight reel was an account in freefall.
This is the dirty secret of trading social media: the people you're following often have no edge either. They're just louder.
A study by the University of Technology Sydney found that retail traders who follow social media "gurus" underperform traders who don't by an average of 2.6% per month.
Following someone else's trades doesn't give you their edge. It gives you their timing — which is almost always wrong for your account, your risk tolerance, and your entry point.
What Sarah needed wasn't a better guru. She needed a system built on data, not on someone else's opinion.
The System That Would Have Protected Sarah's Down Payment. It Costs $0 to Try.
The tool that would have replaced Sarah's TikTok alerts with actual, data-driven trade signals — the one that removes social media noise and replaces it with algorithmic precision — is available with a free 3-day trial.
It's called DragonAlgo.
DragonAlgo doesn't post screenshots on social media. It doesn't cherry-pick winners. It sends you real-time alerts with exact entries, targets, and stop losses — generated by an algorithm that processes market data, not influencer opinions.
Sarah's trading vs. algorithm-assisted trading:
| What Sarah did | What DragonAlgo does |
|---|---|
| Followed TikTok traders | Follows quantitative data |
| No entry criteria | Precise entry levels on every alert |
| No exit plan | Target and stop loss on every trade |
| Traded on lunch breaks impulsively | Alerts come to you — trade when ready |
| Lost $31,000 in 6 months | Risk defined before every entry |
Trusted by thousands of American traders
What DragonAlgo Members Are Saying
"I started trading during COVID and lost everything following people on Twitter. DragonAlgo was the first service that actually felt like a real system, not just someone's opinion. The alerts are specific, the risk is defined, and I finally stopped bleeding money."
"I'm a healthcare worker. I don't have time to stare at charts all day. DragonAlgo sends me the alert, I check the setup on my break, and I execute. That's it. No more gambling on someone else's guess."
Your Savings Deserve Better Than a TikTok Tip.
If you've ever traded based on someone else's social media post — and lost — you already know this feeling. The shame. The secrecy. The promise to yourself that you'll "figure it out eventually."
You won't figure it out by following more people. You'll figure it out by following a system.
- Millions of pandemic-era traders lost money following social media
- The "gurus" you follow are often losing too — they just hide it
- Social media followers underperform by 2.6% per month on average
- DragonAlgo replaces opinions with data-driven signals
- Every alert includes entry, target, and stop loss
- The free trial takes 2 minutes to start
Sarah wishes she'd had a system instead of a TikTok feed. You still can. Don't let social media cost you your savings.
Sources:
FINRA Investor Education Foundation — "Investing During COVID-19" | Pew Research — "Pandemic Trading Surge" | University of Technology Sydney — "Social Media and Retail Trading" | DragonAlgo.com
Advertiser Disclosure: This is a sponsored article. MarketWire may receive compensation when you sign up through links in this article. All opinions are our own. Trading options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of future results.