A trader earned over $1.7 million from AMD and NVIDIA, then bet on SpaceX, only to suffer a loss of more than C$350,000 in a single week.

Canadian retail trader Akshay Sapra recently disclosed that he earned over C$1.7 million trading AMD and NVIDIA between 2024 and 2025, but nearly lost all those gains through high-risk trades. This year, Sapra bet on SpaceX, buying thousands of call options and thousands of shares after the company was added to the Nasdaq 100 Index. SpaceX’s stock price subsequently dropped from $158.92 to $149.47, resulting in a single loss of over C$200,000. He then bought 2,200 put options as a reverse position, losing most of his remaining capital, with total losses exceeding C$350,000 in just one week. Sapra noted he had previously lost nearly C$200,000 betting on Beyond Meat, and completed three weeks of treatment for gambling addiction. Though he has since returned to work as a software engineer and plans to publicly document his trades on YouTube to rein in his behavior, he still wants to keep trading, admitting his actions "too easily veer into gambling". Sapra said he once built his account from negative balances to holding C$350,000, only to fall into a cycle of "earning it back, then losing it again". He believes trading does require some skill, but if you keep making high-risk, emotional trades, it can be no different from gambling.