Chat With Traders · Wednesday, July 8, 2026
David Capablanca shared his story of hitting rock bottom as a trader, living in his car and showering on Skid Row, while simultaneously experiencing his first profitable months. He described this period as a "rollercoaster" during Covid, where he was digging himself out of a financial hole. Capablanca emphasized that his transition into trading required him to completely change his habits and routines, a process that began around 2016.
“And yes, I did. There was a moment for a few months, I did live in my car, and I when my lease ended and I decided, okay, I'm actually going to sell my car. I'm tired of driving Uber. I got enough money now to stabilize myself and pay the credit cards off at the minimum payments and what I'm going to do is I'm going to rent a workspace for $250 a month, a shared. I was like, but where am I going to sleep? I'm like, oh man, because you can't sleep in the it's a shared office. And I was like, whatever, I'll just sleep at the desk. This is how determined I was to change my life around.”
“Skid row, shower, come back, trade, make several thousand in the pre-market, 2020. This is 1 AM. And I timed it perfectly. It's like at midnight, the lady comes into clean the skid row showers. Because you don't want to shower in the middle of the day when it's like 100 people have showered there already. It's very nasty.”
“But like, yeah, so, you know, Covid was, um, was a rollercoaster. Yeah. For everybody, you know, for the whole world. But for me in particular, I had it, it was like bitter sweets. At that time, because I had my first profitable month, my first $10,000 plus month, and at the same time, I'm showering in Skid Row.”