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As if in a frenzy:
Manager
Nikolai Wertz
started with Trade Republic at the end of March.
In the end, he checked the app every two minutes, 16 hours a day.
He lost tens of thousands of euros in the process.
Photo: Dominik Asbach for manager magazin
When Nikolai Wertz can no longer endure the corona lockdown at the end of March, he makes the most expensive decision of his life.
The 46-year-old team leader at an energy company who has never traded stocks before opens an account with the online broker Trade Republic.
Trading via smartphone gives Düsseldorfers the thrill they lack in the home office.
And it distracts from his marriage, which has been in crisis for a long time, which breaks up during this time of being locked up together in a constant dispute.
Wertz, whose real name is known to the editors, is getting in cheaply, while the Dax drops from more than 13,000 to less than 8500 points.
He buys Thyssenkrupp at a price of EUR 3.70 and sells it two weeks later for EUR 6.
Then he starts trading German stocks every day.
"Always the ones who liked the most and who said something to me," he says during a conversation in a bistro at the end of September.
Of course he also makes losses, so he increases the stake.
Soon he was speculating with certificates, the leverage effect of which multiplied profit and loss.
Eight times he bets like this on Tesla, eight times he loses, a total of several thousand euros.
He gambled away 6,000 euros with a leverage certificate on the gold price.
"Price threshold exceeded - puff".
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