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Strategies & Market Trends : ajtj's Post-Lobotomy Market Charts and Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (43096)	11/13/2021 10:36:04 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97281

To be truly successful you have to have the right kind of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. In the '90s, using structured derivatives, I once turned $17k in in mid January into $130k by mid March. Then I took a short trip home to visit my mom and in 4 days I lost $80k. When my mom found out, she gave the typical parenting advice - stop gambling and take the profits. You just lost more money in a week than people make in a year. To which I replied, if I did it your way, that $17k would have never grown to $130k to start with. It is in the nature of leveraged plays to win big and lose big. Money stops meaning anything because if it did, your knees would shake and you'd not be able to handle the pressures of the game. Virtually every great trader that I know of has lost everything and gone to the brink of bankruptcy at least twice. For example, Ray Dalio - after being a well known hedge fund manager and being invited to TV and all, lost everything he had and had to ask his dad for his rent money. And he was not a kid at that time - he was married and had a family. Paul Tudor went bust twice too. Though lucky for him, it was in his twenties. I have thought about this a fair bit. To be truly successful, and not just in the stock market but in anything, you have to have the right kind of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia plus a bit of luck. In the stock market, this means that one side of you takes on risky bets like I did with my derivatives trade - while another side of you kicks in and manages your risk like my mom wanted me to do. In politics this means that you are bold and vibrant enough to excite your followers to charge to the edge, but somehow knowing how to back away from the edge before it is too late. In military it means being supremely brave without being foolhardy. In just about everything it means having perseverance to endure the long trials by fire, while being flexible enough to know you are on the wrong path and changing course when necessary. It is not trivial to learn this kind of psychological disorder. And I strongly suspect that much of it has to do with a combination of genetics and childhood experiences. Research shows that upper and upper middleclass kids who rank at the very top of their classes and show big talent and intelligence often end up doing nothing special with their lives. They just take good paying upper middle corporate jobs. No spending long hours researching new drugs or inventions and no sleepless nights building a disruptive business.