the reason dating apps repulse me is the same reason im repulsed by food delivery apps, rideshare apps, online shopping, the human brain is fundamentally a hunter gatherer. apps allow you to click and order something without putting any work in, going to a store, a restaurant etc
Gainzy says TRADING is the "MOST DIFFICULT PROFESSION"
"Trading is the most difficult profession and people don't even appreciate that"
"Nobody appreciates the money you make - you can literally be on the BRINK OF RUIN... you could have been one or two clicks away from HOMELESSNESS... nobody appreciates that"
"These people have NO IDEA how brutal trading is - you're a gladiator in the coliseum"
I loathe sounding like a boomer.
But.
When I was a kid, Home Depot was run entirely by guys who could make a dovetail joint with a pocket knife. Hobby lobby was staffed by grammas who could make a quilt by hand out of old t shirts (not a metaphor - I own one).
Yesterday, we visited Home Depot and were greeted only by people who speak so little English they didn’t know what a respirator was. Not a single one of them have built anything in their life. The fabric desk at hobby lobby had a lady in a hijab who also didn’t speak English and couldn’t tell us the difference between two fabrics.
Tried enjoying a quiet day at the lake today. Thankfully, I got to experience full cultural enrichment while enjoying my peaceful day out (sound on).
I miss the country I knew.
When ppl claim this I always wonder how they think it happens, or have unrealistic expectations on how much $1bn actually is.
I joined crypto with $200. If I held my initial bitcoin since then and never traded, I would have ~$300k.
If, instead, from that moment I sold the top and bought the bottom of every crypto cycle on Bitcoin, and never paid any taxes, I would have ~$6m USD.
If I put my entire net worth into the Ethereum ICO and never touched it, today I would have ~$150m pre-tax.
While it was definitely possible to have made >$1bn with the opportunities in the market, these versions of reality would also require me to make no mistakes, and have no need to spend $ in real life, or take excessive risk via leverage.
In reality, I grew up in a working class family. I didn’t have a trust fund and I had to pay off my student loan myself. I had a job at Tescos while at high school. After university, I needed to pay rent and fund cost of living and eventually buy a place to live.
I worked at startups for relatively little $ salary, and while a couple have done okay, they still are illiquid and worth nothing until some exit.
Perhaps if I erase a couple of dumb mistakes and drawdowns, or if I had a lil more grind, then my answer would be different today. But it is easy to say this with perfect hindsight vision. It’s easy to see where you could have optimised better, and decisions you made look dumb when the past makes things so obvious.
The truth is I have always optimised for enjoying my life and not going to 0. I never felt like I had a safety net, so it was never possible for me to do anything in any other way. I would probably have less money if I had tried to add more risk or chased $ harder, because being all-in with your entire livelihood is a mental battle and I feel I only win that battle when the stakes are lower.
In writing this, maybe I do understand why CT folks believe this, because modern CT sees crypto as a late-stage lottery ticket farm, where the optimal strategy is to 5x leverage up your portfolio in a hope of catching a good 20% move and then leaving. Or, literally going all-in on the next coin they heard Ansem is buying. So perhaps to them, looking back at the charts, of course that’s what successful folks did.
In reality, I use leverage close to never (and typically to reduce risk rather than add risk — have used it to add risk maybe 3 times in the last 5 years, and maybe 15 times ever). I never go all-in on anything, have only ever done that on BTC and ETH before in the last decade. When I buy other things, I limit risk to tiny amounts, because I treat it as a 0 until proven otherwise (so, always <1% liquid portfolio). Liquid portfolio is also a smaller % of overall portfolio to future-proof against my own fuckups.
Obviously I made a lot of money, I have been here 12 years! CT doesn’t want to hear about “getting rich in a decade” though. I am happy with where I am and have never really cared or optimised for maximising $ earnings, but instead having a nice life that lets me enjoy the game we play together.
The World Cup has turned America into a discovery channel for the rest of the world.
And they are not handling it well.
In the best possible way.
Here is what they are discovering:
Free public restrooms. Europeans pay every time.
Free water at every restaurant. Just appears.
Free refills. Coffee. Sodas. Iced tea. Unlimited.
Free chips and salsa before you even order.
Free warm bread with dinner.
Ice in drinks like civilized people.
Air conditioning everywhere. Not a moral debate. A fact.
Parking lots attached to the actual place you are going.
Drive throughs where the food comes to the car while you sit in it.
Ranch dressing by the gallon.
Tex-Mex that cannot be explained only experienced.
Dental care that actually works.
Buccee’s. There are no words for Buccee’s.
Then they found the grocery stores.
Five of them within one mile.
Each one the size of an aircraft hangar.
Burgers. Steaks. Brisket. Ribs. Pulled pork. Lamb. Veal. Every cut of every animal ever domesticated by human civilization available in one refrigerated aisle at ten in the morning on a Tuesday.
The Germans stood in the meat section for forty five minutes.
In silence.
Processing.
They finally understand why we do not have trains.
We have roads wide enough for the cars we actually drive.
Parking lots the size of small European countries.
Airports in every city worth visiting.
Why would we need trains.
The Germans are taking ranch home by the bottle.
The Dutch found queso and briefly lost the ability to speak.
The Japanese are photographing HEB like it is the Louvre.
The Czechs are weeping in West, Texas.
Welcome to America.
Everything is free, enormous, air conditioned, comes with chips, and has five grocery stores within a mile that will sell you any cut of any animal you have ever imagined.
Write that down. 🦋
If your testosterone levels are low, you should invest your money in roaring bull markets
Investors experience a significant rise in their testosterone levels during bull markets, as per a study done at Rockefeller University
Index hitting new highs is finance version of TRT
ofc many ppl wont agree with me
"if you make life changing money, take it"
and i do somewhat agree
but extraordinary outcomes requires extraordinary behavior
people that "dont go broke taking profit" have zero overlap with the people that have bought and held 100x positions
this is why i generally disagree with arbitrary prices targets
portfolio target? market doesnt know
your position hit some target? market doesnt know
you sell when its time to sell, not some random milestone, like a 2x 10x or even a house
why cant the price still go up? it can
My guest today is Paul Tudor Jones (@ptj_official), one of the greatest macro traders of all time.
He correctly predicted the 1987 stock market crash and shorted the Japanese bubble in 1990. For over 40 years, his flagship fund has had a negative correlation to the S&P 500. 100% of his returns are alpha.
He says today's market has so many similarities to 2000, "the easiest bear market I've ever seen in my whole life."
He makes the case for going long dollar-yen, why Bitcoin beats gold as an inflation hedge, and why he was wrong about Warren Buffett.
But what I'll remember most from this conversation is Paul's zest for life. He's 71 and still wakes at 2:30 every morning to trade the London open. He works out for two hours a day. He walks with his wife every evening. He travels the country chasing peak spring and peak fall. He's so excited about the songs picked for his funeral that he wishes he could be there to hear them.
Paul has lived five lifetimes in one. He's one of the most entertaining and interesting people I've met, and the conversation will leave you searching to be as passionate about what you do as he is about what he does.
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:00 The Kindest Thing
13:19 Trading vs. Investing
17:33 Lessons from Warren Buffet
22:24 The Existential Risks of AI
29:54 The Nature of Trading
31:46 Bitcoin
35:55 Bubbles
42:08 A Day in the Life of PTJ
46:00 Information Overload
47:07 Passion for Markets
50:49 The Robin Hood Foundation
54:18 The Workless World
56:03 Journalism
1:00:00 Principal Components of a Great Life
1:05:06 Kill Them With Kindness
The mistake I see far too often is people trying to capture every minor move. In doing so, they usually miss the one move that actually matters.
The obsession with catching everything is often what causes them to catch nothing of significance.
Then comes the second error… getting stopped out once and immediately reversing bias. One adverse week of price action is not enough to invalidate a HTF thesis.
Sometimes the best opportunities require multiple entries. Sometimes you must absorb one or two failed attempts in order to position for the larger asymmetrical move.
That is the cost of participating in meaningful opportunity.
What traps most people is not being early, it is lacking conviction and discipline to remain aligned with a sound plan when short-term price deviates from expectation. They confuse noise for information, and volatility for invalidation.
The lesson is simple: being early is rarely fatal. What destroys most is abandoning their bias over short term volatility.
Unless your thesis has been structurally invalidated, temporary movement is just noise, not a reason to reverse course.