I’ve been meaning to talk about gold for quite a while now… finally got around to finishing this write-up. Or maybe I just happened to be in the mood today 🥱
https://t.co/ADbRyp287G
For anyone in the investment community, whether professional or amateur, it’s a cliché to say that Warren Buffett is our greatest teacher. We talk endlessly about his philosophies and his approach to capital. But as I was scrolling through my Instagram feed tonight, catching fragments of his interviews before closing my eyes, I was hit by a realization that felt almost uncomfortable: My primary feeling toward Buffett isn't admiration. It’s envy.
It isn't envy of the net worth, the success, or the global influence. It’s an envy of his way of being.
Think about it: how many people on this planet get to make a living doing, mostly, just thinking?
We live in a world that fetishizes the "Operator"—the brilliant entrepreneur changing the world through sheer force of will. But as a massive introvert and loner who prefers the sanctuary of my bedroom or the safety of an oversized hoodie, the "Operator’s" life looks like a nightmare. I think about the hundreds—if not thousands—of clients, employees, and shareholders they have to manage. I see calendars filled with back-to-back meetings and the endless, exhausting talking required to give commands and fix daily problems. To me, that doesn't feel like success; it feels like suffocation.
Most people—even the successful ones—are trapped in a high-frequency, low-leverage loop. They spend their energy on the "crap": the friction of human egos and the tedium of logistics.
Buffett, on the other hand, has engineered a life of cognitive freedom.
His decisions are massive, given the scale of the capital involved, but he has the luxury of time. He gets to sit with a single idea for weeks, months until whenever he’s comfortable with releasing the trigger. He isn’t dealing with the "manufacturing floor" of life; he isn't coping with the "idiots" that most of the workforce is forced to tolerate. Instead, he has spent a lifetime working with a peer—someone like Charlie Munger—who wasn’t just a partner, but a mental mirror. Someone who complemented his intelligence and shared his silence.
We often talk about his "Circle of Competence" as an investing rule, but I see it now as a lifestyle defense mechanism. He refuses to play any game where he doesn't have an edge, and that includes the social game of corporate performance. He has effectively opted out of the noise.
People always wonder how he stays so healthy despite a diet of McDonald’s and Cherry Coke. To me, it’s the ultimate proof that the secret to longevity isn't found in a supplement bottle or a biohack. It’s about the absence of friction. It’s about how joyful and fulfilled your life becomes when you remove the "tax" of doing things you hate with people you don't respect.
The man has truly lived a perfect life.
Walking through downtown earlier today, a girl in a group stopped me to say, “Hey, I really love your jacket.”And I immediately replied, “Thanks, do you want it?”
She laughed, obviously assuming I was joking. But as I actually started shrugging the thing off, the confusion visibly set in. She looked momentarily blacked out, then started stammering, “No, no, no, I didn’t mean that. You don’t have to…” before basically turning around and bolting.
A pity, truly.
And let’s be clear: this isn’t me trying to play the saint. The jacket was already on its way out. I’m currently packing for a move, and a significant portion of my wardrobe — long condemned as glorified dust collectors — is about to lose its rent-free living privileges in my apartment and go find new homes with my best wishes. At the end of the day, some material relationships are only meant to cross paths briefly… So lately I’ve been giving certain clothes a “one last wear” before tossing them into the donation pile, and today was one of those occasions. Plus, it was sweltering outside anyway.
If anything, I would’ve genuinely preferred the piece went to her rather than disappearing anonymously into the donation void. Especially because this was someone who not only actually appreciated it, but was also kind enough to compliment a complete stranger on the street.
But afterward I kept thinking: why not? Why did she retreat from the idea so quickly?
Because if it were me, I genuinely wouldn’t have hesitated. I’d take it, say “how lovely, thank you,” then probably ask if there was anything I was wearing that caught their eye too — hat, sunglasses, shoes, whatever. As long as it isn’t my wallet or my pants, I’d very likely be down. Mostly because I think it’s fun.
I don’t know. Life already feels aggressively over-structured, socially over-calibrated, and painfully predictable most of the time. I think people should allow themselves a little more randomness. A little more spontaneity. Otherwise we’re all just speedrunning the same script every day while pretending that’s a fulfilling way to live.
I was chatting with a Rinpoche at the monastery today, and at one point he asked what I do for a living. I paused for a second and somewhat hesitantly said, “I work as a financial analyst”—which, technically speaking, was the last job I had a couple of years ago when I was still conventionally employed.
Not exactly a lie. More like a strategically outdated truth. In hindsight, I realized there are probably a few reasons why I hesitate to just say outright that I trade for a living.
First, it’s not a profession people intuitively understand in the same way they understand teacher, doctor, lawyer, or programmer. Those jobs come with ready-made social scripts. Say you’re a doctor, and everyone knows what box to file you under. Trading, on the other hand, is conversationally inconvenient. It invites way too many follow-up questions—some driven by curiosity, others by thinly veiled financial voyeurism—and before you know it, a casual conversation has somehow turned into an unsolicited audit of your life choices, income stability, and risk tolerance.
Second, trading attracts an unusual amount of projection. Tell people you’re a doctor, and they automatically assign you moral nobility. Tell people you trade, and in many people’s minds, you’re suddenly somewhere on a blurry spectrum between gambler, parasite, and scam artist.
Not that I particularly care about random people’s opinions in theory. In practice, though, nobody is fully immune to social coding. But the biggest reason is probably much less intellectual and much more embarrassingly human: deep down, I’m still insecure about this way of making a living.
When I win, I’m never entirely sure whether it was skill, discipline, pattern recognition—or just me temporarily being on good terms with probability. When I lose, no matter how much I review, reflect, journal, or meditate on my mistakes, there’s never a guarantee I won’t make some variation of them again. That’s the psychologically strange part about trading: there is no externally granted legitimacy. A surgeon can point to years of training, credentials, institutions, social validation. A trader is more or less judged by one thing only—results. And unfortunately, results in this business are path-dependent and time-sensitive. If I don’t quit halfway, then yes, I’m theoretically playing a long game here—not trying to ride one lucky streak and call it destiny. But I’m still relatively early in that process. Too early, perhaps, to wear the identity with any real confidence. So no, I still can’t quite bring myself to talk about what I do openly, proudly, or without a small amount of internal flinching. I think this partly explains why I’m generally not an open book.
Over the years, whenever social acquaintances ask what I do, I usually rotate between one of three semi-lies:
a. “I’m a financial analyst.”
Partially true—just with a tense issue. Past versus present. Morally grey, but manageable.
b. “I’m currently between traditional roles and taking some time to travel / figure out what I actually want to do with my life.”
Easy for people to understand. Socially legible. Most importantly, it usually ends the conversation there and saves me from having to either answer—or fabricate—an entire chain of career-development-related follow-up questions.
c. “I’m a proud stay-at-home daughter living off parental capital.”
Mostly reserved for practical purposes, such as lease applications and background checks. My current landlord, for example, had obviously found this answer far more reassuring than the concept of market-derived income.🙄
Anyway, all of these crossed my mind today because there are certain people I genuinely feel bad about semi-lying to. So I gonna have to fix this, and come prepared with a version (d): something both honest and sufficiently concise next time.