Stocks and Investors business daily and bear markets

A few years as during the eye of the recession I was trading stocks to make up for some of the lost equity in my real estate portfolio.  The stock market had not yet collapsed and it was really then only game in town where you had a chance to make some nice gains.  I had studied the markets for several years and had a small amount of money sitting in an online account that managed to stay relatively flat for about 8 or 9 years while I focused on my real estate business.  However, as I watched the trends in the stock market it become more and more clear that it was possible to make a great deal of money if you could put about 50,000 in your account for trading.  As my real estate fortune continued to vaporize I decided to put my knowledge to the test. 

I was right you could make a lot of money in the stock market.  In a few months I had added about over 17, 000 to my portfolio.  I was basically a rookie and working with a small amount of capital but I was happy to have made over 4000 profit per month in the beginning.  I was learning to deal with the slight swings in the market and I was learning to deal with the extreme stress of losing a substantial amount of income due to real estate losses. I wasn't over confident in my abilities but I thought it was fun to see my hours and hours of observation and study paying off.  I could see it was becoming more difficult though the more problems that  I was having with my real estate investments. 

I was in a situation that I never dreamed would be happening.  The greatest real estate equity devastation ever seen in our country was under way but I was not extremely worried at first.  I had plenty of assets and plenty of equity to ride out just about any storm, even it it was a couple of years.  I felt confident that a three year  "normal" recession would not cause me much pain.  However, it was the extensive and prolonged agony of a 4 or 5 year real estate drop that would take its toll. 

I also made the mistake of believing all of the news that we were coming out of it after a year or so and that housing had hit bottom in year two of the decline.  It wasn't until about 3.5 years in that I realized just about everything I was hearing in the media was wrong and would be wrong for several more years.