Transcend Fear and Greed

You know I don’t think that trading is an easy way to make a living. Quite the contrary: it is another career. Years of experience succumb to fear and greed, and that could happen in an instant. Fear makes you see things darker than they are. I don’t mean from the perspective of a market like the recent one that can easily wipe out months of accumulated profits in a stock account, although there is that too. But the fear that we will not be able to provide for ourselves for our needs once we exceed a certain age or we simply stop being gainfully employed for one reason or another. This kind of fear is not diminished by trading. So those who think that they can solve their financial troubles by throwing money at the markets may find themselves in an even worse trouble. Unable to sleep at night, they may begin to trade irrationally, exiting trades too soon, for example.

Of course, the opposite is true: If we think that we are going to go from rags to riches with our trading, we will soon be frustrated by our inability to make any headway in our goal to generate profits consistently. In my experience, there isn’t such as thing as consistent profits in the markets. The markets are fluid, and the recent excessively good returns in my trading (53% so far this year) may simply be an indication that the recent volatility spike has favored even my most unlikely trades. To avoid the illusion that I have mastered the markets, rather than having been exceedingly lucky, I need only to look at the difficulty in finding candidates for set ups that have worked recently. One MUST adapt to the new reality.

A big step towards transcending fear and greed is to acquire knowledge and experience. The beginner needs to trust that his/her time will come if he/she perseveres in his/her goals. But of course there is more than that. Wisdom is what one acquires when knowledge and experience do not seem to get us to our goal. Wisdom is more than knowledge and experience, it is beliefs and faith in something beyond ourselves, at least beyond our rational minds.

This year I have learned about Wisdom as I no longer worry about having enough to satisfy my needs, and I am no longer seeking more than what would made me happy as a human being. This epiphany, ironically, has brought me to profits I had not experienced before, even in the late 90’s. This wisdom has shown me that one needs only to serve others to participate in the abundance that is available from the vast resources of the universe. The more you share, the more you get back, it is that simple, and that complicated.

Albert Einstein once said that we are on this earth for the sake of others only. It follows than that we can only reap the rewards we seek if we provide a service to others. I have what I need and all that I wanted now. I have been in the desert and come out stronger for it. I have learned that only those that stop worrying about their own carcass have time to consider others (paraphrasing Robert Louis Stevenson). Ironically, it is only by serving others that we can possible and fairly profit from the abundance that is available for all of us.

It is undoubtedly ironic that trading in the stock market is the most self-oriented form of endeavor there could be. Profits and profits alone is apparently the only goal in trading in the stock market. The irony is in that I have learned that sharing my knowledge (on how to profit from the markets) freely and openly with others could be the means to generate good will in the world and thus servicing a larger purpose, beyond me and you who share this blog.

Be sure my friends that you will attain the goal that you seek, in an incalculable proportion to the effort you have put in, transcending your fear and your greed, but only when you realize that we are in this world for the purpose of serving others only. Those riches will only come to you when you commit to serving others, Paying it Forward by doing something special and big for others that cannot do it for themselves. Then you will have what you need, what you deserve, but a lot more than that. You will have a worthwhile existence.