Day Trader Says He Made $306 Million on Tesla, Then Lost It All

Christopher DeVocht, a carpenter from Vancouver Island, Canada, says he started out like a lot of day traders. After work, he’d read about trading on forums. His favorite things to trade were options on Tesla Inc. stock.

Then he went on what has to be one of the hottest hot streaks in the history of financial markets, according to a legal filing. At the end of 2019, his account, with the brokerage division of Royal Bank of Canada, was worth C$88,000. Within two years, he’d turned that into C$415 million ($306 million), he says.

Some people would have cashed ...