My point is that jxn will be an adult in a period that is akin to the 60s and 70s. The next time the market/economy will operate the way it did in the 90s is 60 years from now. When he is an adult, there isn't going to be a tech boom and there isn't going to be a housing boom where property values double and triple in a matter of 10 years.
I was 32 when I started working at Cisco. I was having money thrown at me from every direction. I made $100,000 in two days on one option trade.
On the day that CSCO hit $82, I was thinking of selling all of my options. My wife and I decided to wait for $100.....and then all the way down, we waited for it to bounce so we could get more out of it.
My point is that the first reason that I had greed out of control was that I had an opportunity for it. Like millions of others who got rich in the 90s. But if I were truly greedy, meaning that I tried to maximize my wealth, I would have paid attention to every sign that said we were at a top and i would have sold my long positions and gone short. Which I eventually did...but then, when we were at a bottom, I got lazy there too and missed the turn to go long. The true sin wasn't greed, it was laziness. I got lazy, like millions of others who got lazy and thought the money would keep on flowing in without having to put any effort into it. We started confusing a bull market for brains (or vice versa).
I would be very proud of myself if I had sold the top in March/April 2000 and gone short and then turned around and gone long in in late 2002. I certainly would have maximized my greed quotient.
Again, it was laziness, not greed that made me lose all that money.
Jxn will never have the opportunity to get rich while being lazy. He's going to have to work his whole adult life. And that's not a bad thing. His kids will probably time it just right to catch the next big tulipmania. By then, everyone will have forgotten about the crash of 2000 and the crash of 2008/2009 and the cycle will start all over again. |
