One time when I was sitting in my college dormitory, I heard a whoop of joy from down the hall. My dorm-mate announced that he had just made $US500,000 trading in the sharemarket, after having invested only a few thousand dollars. When I asked him how he did it, he grinned and simply said: "Call options." I spent the rest of the day reading about how this marvellous financial instrument could be used to make a fortune in a day with just a small initial stake.

Of course, my lucky dorm-mate doubled down on his investment and ended up losing most of his money when the dotcom bubble burst a couple of months later.

Washington Post