- Indian-origin techie Akshay Sapra lost over $350,000 CAD through stock trading addiction
- Sapra started trading in 2017 after buying marijuana stocks as a college student
- He struggled with impatience and a scarcity mindset influenced by his childhood
An Indian-origin techie working in the Greater Toronto area in Canada has revealed how he lost more than $350,000 Canadian dollars (Rs 2.39 crore) through stock trading. 31-year-old Akshay Sapra said what started as a way to earn some extra cash due to his early childhood experience quickly spiralled into a full-blown trading addiction that left him in serious debt.
Speaking to Business Insider, Sapra said he was four years old when his family moved to Canada from India. They started off by working odd jobs before his father launched a successful veterinarian practice in Kelowna. Despite this, Sapra always carried a 'scarcity mindset,' which eventually contributed to his addiction.
Sapra first dipped his toes in the stock market in 2017 as a college student after a friend told him that marijuana was going to be legalised. Subsequently, Sapra bought some marijuana stocks, which climbed the trade charts. Though Sapra did not make any significant money, he kept buying and selling, trying to predict short-term price movements.
"Even though it cost me $10 per trade back then, I couldn't stop transacting. I would sit at the front of university lectures to ask questions and look keen, but 10 minutes in, I'd be trading on my laptop,"
"I discovered very early on that I have 'paper hands.' I don't have the patience to wait for a portfolio to compound over time, like Warren Buffett," said Sapra, adding that he lost a lot of money in the beginning, which came from his campus jobs and internships.
After graduation, Sapra landed an engineering job, but eventually trading came back into his life. An innocuous bet on Meta turned out to be the turning point in his life.
"One day, Meta was releasing earnings, and I made a bet at lunchtime that its stock would fall. The company performed poorly, and my bet returned a massive profit. I went and bought an expensive martini to celebrate, something I'd never done before," said Sapra.
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Trading Addiction
Over the next four years, Sapra kept trading, going up one year and plummeting down the next. Sapra said his childhood experiences and the pressure he felt from his parents affected his mental health. He eventually left his software engineering job. Instead of working full-time, he spent his days delivering for Uber and stock trading.
Sapra went to a three-week gambling addiction programme to get treated. However, he went straight back to trading after leaving the facility.
“I eventually went to a three-week gambling addiction program for my stock trading habit, without access to my phone. Ironically, my bot continued to trade. While I was in treatment, some other patients told me I would go back to trading. They were right," he said.
Sapra bet on SpaceX to make a fortune, but it did not pay off. He ended up losing more than $350,000.
"I made a series of calls that very quickly erased that money. In just a month, I had lost, made, and lost again over $300,000 (Rs 2 crore) betting on SpaceX.”
Despite these losses, Sapra said he intends to continue trading and start a YouTube channel, recording every trade in the hope that it keeps him accountable.
"I saw this Reddit comment under one of my posts that really hit home: you could go from $300,000 to $200,000, and it feels like that $200,000 is basically worthless. I want people to realise how prevalent this feeling is, because it happened to me."
