Why did I quit a well-paid, full-time engineering tech job at a MAG-7 company in Silicon Valley to become a part-time trader/investor? Very few retail traders are consistently profitable. And many end up blowing up their accounts. So what’s the big appeal to this risky, unpredictable, and lonely endeavor?
Whether I was right or delusional, here are my beliefs.
1. There are plenty of fish every day to be taken
I see the market as a vast ocean in front of a beach I was washed up on, with plenty of fish swirling around. Every day, the market provides heaps of money to be taken, again and again.
Not many people notice any fish at all. Or maybe many of them don’t believe they could catch them.
Belief is critical, of course. Until one believes something is actually possible, it is mostly unfeasible. And then, there needs to be the willingness, real, unshakable, and deep to the core, to do it.
Ed Seykota, a famous trader, once wrote:
Win or lose, everybody gets what they want from the market. Some people win by losing. Some people win by winning.
Just like in a casino, many people are having fun losing money. What they really want is to have a thrill, an adrenaline rush, while a dice is rolling. So they win even when they lose.
I want a steady flow of income from the market into my accounts. With the unbounded flexibility to operate from anywhere. And the time to pursue other ventures. All of that.
The blue ocean has been providing those fish, and I will catch them.
Some days, there’ll be storms out there, and I wouldn’t venture too far from the shore. I may end up not catching anything, and fast for the day. However, I have seen opportunities coming incessantly every week, all seasons. Will I, one day, trip my boat and drown?
2. It’s an incredible game to play
The game is probably remarkably hard and challenging to win, as the vast majority of people fail to beat the index returns.
You even have a whole industry discouraging anyone from playing this game. “You can’t really catch fish in the long run. The Market is Efficient,” they postulate. “Just sit back, be a passive investor, relax and enjoy the sashimi platter that will come your way, eventually”.
I like to play. I like finding challenging puzzles, big and small, and the fact that if I solve them, I get a reward. If I fail, I lose money. It wouldn’t be an interesting game if I couldn’t lose.