Anyone else feel mentally messed up seeing people casually make insane money trading options?
u/savingrace0262 ·
Reddit — r/stocks
· May 09, 2026 at 23:53
· ⬆ 58 pts
· 💬 69 comments
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AI Summary
Summary
The author expresses frustration, jealousy, and FOMO from seeing acquaintances make large gains through options trading while they themselves follow a conservative long-term investing approach.
The thesis is that these apparent wins are likely survivorship bias and gambling, and that the rational path remains steady investing in shares/ETFs.
Quality assessment: This is noise/psychological venting, not well-researched due diligence or a specific investment thesis.
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Long term small investor here with a regular 9-6 job. Lately I’ve been feeling this weird mix of jealousy, FOMO, and frustration seeing people I know make what looks like stupid amounts of money trading options.
I’m in my 30s, put in long hours every week, try to save/invest the “right” way, etc. Meanwhile I’ll open Instagram or Twitter and see acquaintances posting screenshots of turning like $3k into $20k in a week off some random NVDA or SPY calls. And the way they talk about it makes it sound so casual too, like it’s just free money if you know what you’re doing.
I know logically I’m probably only seeing the wins and not the losses. I get that nobody’s posting the account they nuked or the times they lost half their paycheck in 2 days. But even knowing that, it still kind of gets in my head sometimes and makes me question whether I’m wasting my time grinding at work while other people are making my monthly salary off a couple trades.
What makes it worse is some of these people genuinely don’t seem smarter, harder working, or more financially responsible than me. They just happened to get into options and now it feels like they’re operating in a completely different financial universe.
For people who’ve dealt with this mindset before, how do you stop comparing yourself?
Not looking for therapy answers lol. Just curious if other people in here have had the same thoughts.