A day-trader on Reddit claimed they made a 3,500% gain, and turned $35,000 into $1.25 million during the pandemic

• A Reddit user on a popular subreddit forum "WallStreetBets" claimed they turned an initial investment of $35,000 from their retirement savings into more than $1 million.
• The user — who goes by "mori226" — said their winning bets were made through a journey totaling 350 trades.
• The trader declared that their biggest winning bets were on electric-vehicle maker Nikola, Amazon, Disney, and Apple.
• Markets Insider has not independently verified the Redditor's claims about their market wins.
• However, the user posted numerous screenshots of what appeared to be their trading account, which seem to show the gains.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A Reddit user on the site's "WallStreetBets" forum claimed they turned $35,000 into $1.25 million during the throes of the pandemic.

"I cracked the 7-figure mark, and then some," the trader said in a post published on Wednesday.

Going by the username mori226, the anonymous trader claimed to have had an "insane wild ride" through 350 trades beginning from March onwards.

Markets Insider has not independently verified the Redditor's claims about their market wins, but they posted numerous screenshots that appeared to show proof of their success, including a chart of their gains and a complete history of all the trades made in the period.

If the portfolio did increase from $35,000 to $1.25 million in that period, it would represent a gain of about 3,471%.

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The trader held that their journey started with $35,000 in retirement savings that were saved up from a previous job, and he withdrew $50,000 sometime along the way.

They were more than happy to detail their self-proclaimed success story for other users on the subreddit forum.

Mori226 recommended holding 50% cash reserves as a minimum at all times and going into out-of-the-money (OTM) positions of about 10-15%. An OTM position is an option with a price that the underlying security is yet to reach, which is why it has no intrinsic value.

The biggest lesson they learnt was to "not beat yourself up" over bad trades and mistakes, letting the winners ride, and focusing on what's left in the account to climb back up.

Another one of their practices includes never closing a position within the first hour of market opening, but closing it in the last hour instead.

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The trader warned against putting more than 25% in any single position and not to follow irrationality.

"Losses don't kill options traders, calculating your alternate universe net worth on your woulda-coulda-shouldas do," they wrote, and added that emotions are the key to discipline.

Their biggest winners were led by making huge profits on electronic vehicle truck-maker Nikola Corp, Amazon, Disney, and Apple, he said.

Nikola, an alternative-fuel company, is already worth $23 billion despite zero sales or revenue. It eventually wants to go after both Tesla and the freight market.

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