The Bright Side

Put aside the market and look at the bigger picture. Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian yields are now below crisis/bailout levels. Effectively, the impotent Europeans have cut the dicks off the bond bears, leaving everyone without penis. Stocks are within striking range of new highs and down days no longer include rumors of total and complete systemic melt downs.

All too often I see people in my industry tether personal happiness with the market. They judge themselves by the value of their accounts or the size of their checks. When things are bad, they’re depressed. When times are good, they’re arrogant pricks, but happy. I’ve seen many good people lose themselves in the market, turning it into a gambling habit instead of an avocation or occupation.

If you were just interested in making enough interest from your accounts to cover expenses, you’d behave differently, wouldn’t you? If you had $1m in stocks and only required $100k per annum in free cash flow for expenses, your investment theme or structure should reflect that, no? As a manager of other people’s money, I tend to be very conservative with my personal money, sans my aggressive trading account. After all, my livelihood is already linked to the success/failures of my clients. To take the revenue generated from that business and toss it into stocks would be juvenile, unnecessarily leveraging myself to the superfluities of a manipulated stock market. A few years back I made a phenomenal amount of money and an outrageous percentage gain (+900%) gambling in my personal/aggressive account–with the help of leverage and derivatives. The very next year the account was nearly cut in half, simply conforming to the laws of averages. It became a distraction for me, so I closed out the account and bought a house with the proceeds.

If you are down and out because of the market, cheer the fuck up; it’s only money. I say this with great experience, having been raised without money, made a fortune, lost a fortune and made it back again. Life is filled with possibilities. So many times I’ve felt a sense of doom, stemming from failures in the market. Things have a way of working out, providing one is willing to keep fighting, mind you.

There is a reason why I say “The Fly” wins all the time, even when he appears to be losing badly. I never quit or lose confidence in my abilities to make money; hence, the prophecies of The Fly continue to reveal timeless truths to the masses of the internets and others who happen to cross my path.