History... A painful lesson, a reflection, a shadow or our future?

History always tends to repeat itself, as the cliche saying goes.. or should we learn from our past?

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians..... Warren Buffett

Someone once told me that the stock market is like the biggest casino in the world. It can make you a millionaire overnight but you can also be totally wiped out the next day. I know of people who burnt their fingers terribly in the stock market and spent the next few years working very hard to pay off their debts. Trading seminars, textbooks and software are exhorbitantly high priced but still, people are willing to pay. If they are equipped with the knowledge so what went wrong?
Type in the words "trading rules" in the google search box and you will find a lot of articles related to the search. We know the trading rules but are we really executing them? Is our mind strong enough to cut our loss to a minimum? I can't say too much, I am also guilty of that...

Trade with care and trade within your means... Do your homework.. Fundamental and technical analysis are equally important.. Be patient! Delayed gratification is a sign of maturity....

If you have been there, done that.. pick up the pieces and learn from your mistakes.
Some people learn from other's mistake, some learn from their own mistakes and others never learn... Which category do you belong to?

16th Sept 1992 Black Wednesday
Not able to keep the pound sterling at the agreed lower limit, the conservative government suspended Britain's membership from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
The UK goverment lost an estimated 3.4 million pounds.

1997 Asian Financial Crisis
The Asian financial crisis started with the devaluation of Thailand’s Bath, which took place on July 2, 1997, a 15 to 20 percent devaluation that occurred two months after this currency started to suffer from a massive speculative attack and a little more than a month after the bankruptcy of Thailand’s largest finance company, Finance One. This first devaluation of the Thai Baht was soon followed by that of the Philippine Peso, the Malaysian Ringgit, the Indonesian Rupiah and, to a lesser extent, the Singaporean Dollar. This series of devaluations marked the beginning of the Asian financial crisis. This first sub-period of the currency crisis took place between July and October of 1997. www.westga.edu/~bquest/2003/asian.htm

Late 1990s Dot-Com Bubble
We are all familiar with this. Remember the dot com stocks? The "dot-com bubble" (or sometimes the "I.T. bubble"[1]) was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 (with a climax on March 10, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52) during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related fields. While the latter part was a boom and bust cycle, the Internet boom sometimes is meant to refer to the steady commercial growth of the Internet with the advent of the world wide web as exemplified by the first release of the Mosaic web browser in 1993 and continuing through the 1990s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

Sept 11
Major economic effects arose from the September 11 attacks, with initial shock causing global stock markets to drop sharply. The attacks themselves caused approximately $40 billion in insurance losses, making it one of the largest insured events ever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

2008
Lehman Brothers, one of the world’s biggest investment banks, has announced it is filing for bankruptcy, in one of the worst banking collapses in history. As the world economy prepared for a round of devastating blows caused by the credit crisis, Bank of America also agreed to buy Merrill Lynch, another giant of investment banking, for $50 billion in a deal creating the world’s largest financial services company and saving Merrill from Lehman’s fate. Asian markets tumbled on the news, while European and American markets were expected to follow soon after opening. Coupled with moves by other Wall Street giants, billions of pounds worth of value from pension funds and other investments could be wiped by the end of the day. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/2966656/Lehman-Brothers-files-for-bankruptcy-as-credit-crisis-bites.html2009

Dubai Crisis
With the onset of a financial crisis of 2007–2010, Dubai's real estate market declined after a six-year boom. On November 25, 2009, the Dubai government announced that the company "intends to ask all providers of financing to Dubai World and [its subsidiary] Nakheel to 'standstill'[7] and extend maturities until at least 30 May 2010".[8] The company has laid off 10,500 employees worldwide[9] as the company restructures with the help of Deloitte consultants. At that time, Dubai World had debts of $59-billion, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the emirate's US$80-billion debt.[10] This includes a US$3.5-billion loan which the company is unable to repay by its December deadline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_World