Frozen

Frozen? 

It’s ok. 

Breathe. 

You need to acknowledge that you’re frozen. 

Without that, the next step won’t come. 

It’s normal to freeze sometimes. Just acknowledge it. Then learn. 

For example, I acknowledge that I’m currently frozen wrt to the USDINR short trade. Missed entry. Next opportunity to enter never developed for me, and the underlying is currently in free fall. Don’t have the guts to short it at this level. Yeah, I’m frozen all right.

However, the fact that I’m acknowledging it opens up the learning window. 

Why did I miss entry?

I know why I froze. Fear. What I need to understand is why I allowed a situation to develop that would lead to fear. 

Ok. 

Was running super busy. 

Neglected the underlying. 

Kept postponing entry… 

… till free-fall started. 

It’s good to be busy. 

Hmmm, so this can happen again. 

How do I stop this from happening again? 

If I ID a setup, I need to take it. 

No second-guessing. 

What about strategy? 

Meaning, am I going with a short strategy for USDINR? Or am I keeping the window open for a long strategy?

See, that’s it.

Keeping short and long windows open makes me second-guess all the time. 

So can I go in one-direction wrt USDINR all the time? 

What speaks for it? 

Underlying is falling from a height. Good. 

Short only means no second-guessing. You just go short, period. 

Stoploss will save ruin. 

Not nipping profits in the bud will amass fortunes. 

Can the underlying keep falling over the next few years? 

Why not? Modi’s looking set for 2019. 

Hmmm, so a short only strategy has a lot going for itself. 

There’s more. Future month contracts are quoted at a premium. The premium evaporates over the current month. This move is in your favour if you’re short. 

Ok, enough. 

Yeah, there’s enough on the table to warrant a short only strategy for USDINR. 

SEE? 

Learning process. 

Why did it happen?

Because I acknowledged that I had frozen. 

Now, my strategy is more fine-tuned and I’m probably less prone to second-guessing. 

You need to pull off such stuff when you freeze. 

Use the freeze to evolve. 

Scaling Up

When you find a system… 

… that works… 

… what’s the next step? 

Plunge? 

Wait. 

Look left and right. 

Meaning? 

Look at your basics. 

Are they in place? 

Meaning? 

No worries about food on the table? 

No worries about kids’ education funds?

Basic family luxuries in place? 

No? 

Get these together and going. 

Yes. 

Ok. 

Go for it. 

Scale up. 

Your decision to scale up should at no time endanger your basics. 

You’re scaling up from  your extras.

You’re scaling up with stops in place. 

If your stops are hit, you’ll change your system till it works again. 

You will not borrow from your basics. 

You will wait for your extras to accumulate, and divert these into scaling up. 

Having gotten all that out of the way, let’s cast a glance at the concrete process. 

1x is working, or so you say. 

In fact, you’re sure 1x is working. 

Ok. 

Now do 2x.

Working? 

5x.

Can you take it? 

Do you sleep well at night? 

Fine. 

10x.

Working? 

Family life intact? 

Basics intact?

Fine. You take it from here. 

Where do you plateau? 

Right before a level where something might get disturbed. 

It’s really that simple. 

Happy scaling up! 

🙂 

Wealth-Generators often go Contrarian

You knew that too, right? 

Sure. 

Going contrarian is a buzz-phrase. 

We hear it again and again…

… till we begin to start thinking… 

… that we know what it means. 

Well, try going contrarian. 

Yeah, try actually doing it. 

You’ll see what I mean. 

It’s real hard. 

Going against the crowd takes all the strength you might have… 

… and then some. 

Most humans aren’t able to go contrarian. 

Most humans aren’t wealthy. 

When there’s blood on the streets, there’s no telling how much more there will be. 

Under such conditions, the contrarian investor lets go of his or her hard-earned money into an investment, knowing perfectly well that the Street might even value the investment tomorrow at a huge discount to today’s price.

That’s ok too, says he or she.

Why?

Because homework’s been done.

Underlying is strong.

Debt-free.

Management is stellar.

Balance-sheet is robust.

Projections are paramount.

That the world is pricing the investment wrongly is a problem with its vision.

Underlying is not going under. With above credentials, this alone matters.

Times change. Vision of the majority changes. Investor makes a killing. Cashes out some, principal and what have you. Leaves lots of free-standing shares… forever… or till parameters change.

Wealth-generators repeat this behaviour-pattern many times in their lives.

They’re not afraid of going against the grain.

They know otherwise.

Also, the money they use has been freed up.

Its being out of action for a long time is not going to change their lives even a bit.

They will have the last laugh.

Wealth is the reward of going contrarian. 

You knew that Other Big Thing about Wealth, right? 

Yeah that one… 

… the one that contains the phrase “the more you give, the more you get”… 

…? 

Of course you did. 

Who’d have thought otherwise?

However… 

…knowing is one thing… 

… and doing is the real deal. 

Knowing doesn’t necessarily make you do. 

Full-on realization does. 

How’s that going to happen? 

By understanding the principle of flow. 

Flow? 

Why flow? 

What’s flow got to do with it? 

One would perhaps study flow… 

… in physics… 

…? 

That’s exactly it. 

Wealth behaves as per the laws of natural science. 

It flows from high-potential to low-potential. 

When you give, energy flows away from you. 

Vacuum is created. 

New energy flows to this vacuum. 

Vacuum attracts flow. 

It’s a law of nature. 

New wealth flows towards the giver. 

Vacuums have compounded attraction-force. 

Thus compounded new wealth flows towards the giver. 

Need I say anything more? 

I’ll say it nevertheless. 

Whatever you can, whenever you can, wherever you can… 

… GIVE! 

Apart from turning even wealthier… 

… you’ll feel this other thing. 

It’s called content. 

It’s bigger than wealth. 

Lots of wealthy people die wealthy, but few die content. 

Wealth-Generators know how to Sit

Most humans don’t know how to sit. 

Most humans are not wealthy. 

If you are a wealth-generator, you’ve probably already made the connection, knowingly or unknowingly. 

You sit. 

You are focused.

You know what you are doing. 

You are confident about what you are doing. 

You don’t keep looking over your shoulder. 

You are not jumpy. 

You don’t require a daily quote. 

In fact, you’re quite happy with a monthly quote. 

You know the value of your underlying. The world cannot tell you otherwise. 

You seal one wealth-generating opportunity, and move on to the other. 

That helps you to sit on the former, while you focus on the latter…

…till you seal the latter, which is when you move on to the next one, and so on and so forth. 

Soon, you are at the pivot of many, many wealth generating ideas. 

You are surrounded by multiples. 

Some have fully matured. 

You bring them to their logical conclusion. If this is a cash-out, well it’s a cash-out. 

You move the funds resulting appropriately…

…perhaps to a new avenue…

…or perhaps to finance something big…

…be it a lifetime-requirement…

…or what have you. 

You recognise the fact that one of the main purposes of wealth is also to fulfil lifetime-requirements. 

Mere income is not able to fulfil these. 

Generated wealth is. 

You recognise that. 

You are a wealth-generator. 

You know how to sit. 

The One Basic Difference between Wealth and Income 

What’s with this wealth vs income series? 

It goes on and on. 

So what? 

Any problems? 

Thoughts are like threads. 

They can be pulled into infinite. 

Also, they are a realm in which one has unlimited freedom. 

The speed of thought is faster than the speed of light. 

Think about it. 

From here to there – anywhere – Jupiter – Uranus – some other universe – in a flash. 

Explore your thoughts. Pull them out into infinite threads. It pays. 

We are trying to understand the meaning of wealth. 

How is it different from income?

What’s the one elephant-in-the-room factor that sums up this difference? 

Is there even such a factor? 

Yes, I feel there is. 

Maybe someone’s come up with this before. I don’t care. We all stand upon the shoulders of giants, as do I. From there, we generate our two pennies. 

So, how is wealth intrinsically and basically different from income?

Income is something you take out of your flow, to finance your everyday environment, including shucking up for nitty-gritties in day to day lives of those who depend upon you. 

Wealth can be generated from that portion of your flow that has not been taken out for mundane use. This flow, which has not been taken out, has then been simultaneously allowed to coexist by you in a different form, over a long period of time. It accrues, compounds and multiplies – over the long period of time – into wealth.

The most lucrative things in life are also the most simple ones. 

Being simple doesn’t come easy to most of us. 

That is why the majority of humans are not wealthy. 

Multiples obey skewed mathematics

Income-oriented linear growth… 

… is single-digit. 

There’s something safe about it. 

It’s going to be there tomorrow, and after that. 

Safety means less return. 

You’re ok with that as far as basic income is concerned. 

Not so the case when it comes to wealth. 

With wealth, the multiple comes into play. 

Multiples dance to a different tune. 

The search for multiples can lead to negative return – for a while at least. 

It’s risky. 

The level of reward is coupled to a corresponding level of risk. 

In comes time. 

Wealth-play is palatable because of time not pushing you to the wall. 

With time on your side, the ingredients of your cooking-pot have ample opportunity to sprout and grow into big trees. 

If growth is not able to take off owing to lack of circumstance, this becomes the breeding ground for negative return. High deductibles add to the bleeding. After all, it’s wealth you’re seeking to generate, and there will be a little blood. 

Such is the game. 

If you can’t stomach the ride till the multiples emerge, play the income-game full-time instead. 

However, once you start to digest the wealth-game, you realize that is really quite headache-free and pretty much an auto-pilot avenue. 

You’ll even start to like it when the first multiples emerge! 

Going for the Multiple 

Relax. 

We’re not going for the jugular. 

Or are we? 

The jugular has the most copious flow. 

Maybe we are then… 

… going for the jugular. 

However, there’s no stabbing happening. 

We do everything from the inside of our comfort-zone.

We act with harmony. 

Balance. 

Focus. 

Intelligence. 

Common-sense. 

We try and be non-violent about it. 

What are we doing? 

We’re looking to create wealth. 

What makes us look? 

Security. Our basic income secures us. 

Boredom. Adding to our basic income has become boring. 

Overflow. As basic income starts to overflow, it needs a long-term avenue in which it doesn’t demand our constant attention. 

Fine. 

What’s the best way… 

… to go about it?

Where there’s honey, there are bees. 

Finance-people find you. You have money. They have investments. For finance-people, you are bread and butter. 

So, you sit. 

You wait. 

You let them come. 

You’ve got discriminatory-ability. 

You sift. 99% of what comes goes into the bin. 

You like 1%. 

You invest in that 1%.

How much? 

Whatever you pre-define as your per-annum outflow into wealth-creation. 

Only that much. 

What then? 

What’s the bottom-line? 

What’s your holding strategy? 

Nothing. 

You sit. 

The biggest money is made…

…while sitting.”

You’re not even looking at your long-term investment more than once a month. 

You’re not interested in daily quotes.

The daily quote can say zero. You don’t care. You know that you are in the process of creating wealth, and that it’s going to take long, and within that period you don’t care if the world thinks your holding is zero, because you know it isn’t. 

Why? 

Due-diligence. 

Ability to think differently. 

Ability to see wealth in its nascent stage, and to recognize it. 

You have these things. 

They didn’t come for free. 

You took some solid hits to earn them. 

Yeah, you have what it takes, and that’s why… 

… you’re going for the multiple. 

Wealth vs Income – the What-When-Why? 

Income… 

… comes into your account… 

… on a regular basis. 

You spend a good part of it to keep your ball rolling. 

If you save even a fraction, well you’re good, because this ain’t really an age of savers. 

Saved income goes into an asset. 

The asset either generates more income…  

… or, it generates wealth. 

What is wealth?

Wealth is not income. It doesn’t come into your current account regularly. 

Wealth accrues. 

Wealth compounds.

Wealth multiplies. 

Wealth grows in a skewed fashion, like an exponential curve.

You don’t look at your wealth-generating asset everyday. Once a month is more than enough. 

Wealth funds big events. 

Wealth likes time, to grow. 

Wealth separates you from those who are hungry. Hunger is not limited to food. 

Have you understood the nature of wealth?

What do you strive for, income or wealth?

That’s a huge question.

I’ve answered it for myself.

It’s taken 12+ years to find the answer.

I’ll tell you.

I now strive to create wealth.

Why?

Because income has become just a number to my mind.

Yes, that’s the answer for me.

Learning to define the quest for income or wealth requires the appropriate state of mind.

When income becomes just a number to your mind, addition to it doesn’t satisfy you anymore.

Yeah, the kick is missing…

…the thrill-factor…you know what I’m talking about. 

In an effort to rekindle this missing element, you then look to create wealth.

There’s enough additive securing you. 

You start going for the multiple. 

🙂

MP vs MoS : the lowdown on Trade-Entry

Margin of Safety (MoS)… 

… hmmm… 

… wasn’t that in investing? 

Well – surprise – it’s in trading too. 

You can enter a trade with MoS. 

How? 

Ok.

ID the trend. 

Wait for a minor reversal.

Let the reversal continue towards a pivot, or a support or a what have you. 

During this reversal, whenever you feel that you have considerable MoS, well – enter. 

Why shouldn’t you wait for the pivot to get touched? 

Things happen real fast at a pivot. Upon a pivot-touch, you can lose your comfort-zone even within minutes. 

Two vital things can happen at a pivot. 

Either there’s a quick bounce-back, or the pivot gets broken. 

Bounce-back means your trade is now in the money, and that you can go about managing your trade as per your trade-management rules. Wonderful. 

Pivot-break is not a worry for you. 

Why? 

Because you’ve placed your stop slightly below pivot, after the noise. 

Upon pivot-break, you get stopped out. You take the small hit and move on to your next trade. 

Eventually, things heat up. 

There is movement. 

Tops get taken out. 

Fast money can be made. 

How do you enter here? (Needless to say, for shorts, everything is to be understood reversed). 

Momentum play (MP)… 

… is the weapon of choice. 

You set up a trigger entry after a top or a resistance or a what have you, and wait for price to pierce, and for your entry to get triggered. Then you place your stop, below top or resistance or what have you. 

MP vs MoS is a matter of style. 

If you’re not comfortable changing your trading style to adapt to times, that’s fine too. Stick to one style.

If you’re conservative, stick to MoS. 

In a frenzy, however, MoS might almost never happen. 

In a frenzy, entry will be triggered exclusively through MP.

Take your pick. Adapt. Do both. Or don’t. Do one.

You call the shots. 

This is about you.

Did you invite the f-word?

The next trade… 
… yeah… 
… take it. 
What? 
Can’t? 
Why?  
Afraid of what might happen. 
That’s the whole thing. 
You see a setup – you trade the setup.
When you see a setup, there are no more what-ifs, supposings or anything. Then, it’s just you and the trade. Take the trade. 
No room for f-(ear). It’s the new f-word.  
How do you drive fear out of the equation? 
Risk a miniscule fraction of your networth per trade. 
Don’t make trading your bread and butter. Make it your bonus. 
Don’t allow anyone else’s negativity to creep in. Don’t talk to people. Trade on your own. No room for tips. 
Don’t listen to your broker. Tell him what to do.
Don’t trade under compulsion. 
Enjoy your trading. 
Once in the trade, lose the mini-bias that got you in. Now, just manage the trade. 
Stop hit? You’re out. 
Run? 
Raise stop. 
Running? 
Keep raising stop. 
Losing some of your notional profits? Market throws you out?
Good. That’s a proper exit. 
See, fear wasn’t allowed to the party. 
Look for next setup. 
Position-size your entry. 
Take the next trade. 
And so on and so forth. 
Not upto trading?
Ok. Don’t trade. Till you’re up to it.
 
Demons out of the way? 
 
Up to trading again? 
 
See the next setup?
 
Take it.

Does your Exit hurt you?

Good. 

Good? 

Yeah. Good. 

A proper exit – hurts. 

Huh? 

What about exiting on a high? 

Sure. 

Go ahead. 

Exit on your high.

Who’s stopping you? 

However… 

… who’s to say that the high won’t become higher? 

Exactly. 

No one knows. 

So, while the uncertainty about the high becoming higher is still out there – smarty – why are we going to not let it play out? 

Exactly. 

We are going to let it play out. 

Purpose? 

A new high might be posted. We then make more profit. 

Or, trade starts going against us, and we start to lose some of what we’ve gained. 

Hurt starts. 

When you can’t stand this hurt anymore – exit. 

That’s a proper exit. 

It’s leaving a bad taste in your mouth in the end. That’s when you know it’s a proper exit. 

You’ve stomped out the possibility of a new high. 

You’ve taken what the trade has to give. 

You’ve let the hurt set in. 

You’ve let the trade arrive at its logical conclusion. 

Now, you are exiting. 

Congratulations, you are exiting properly. 

Continue like this and you’ll become a great trader. 

What, have I let the cat out of the bag? 

Don’t worry, one can say it a million times and 99% of all traders will still continue to exit improperly. 

It’s human nature. 

Human nature works against the mindset of a winning trader.

Building Your Own

You do. 

In the process, you learn. 

More experienced ones advise. 

Fine. 

You listen to their advice. 

Ok. 

Stop. 

Think. 

What experience are we talking about?

Their experience.

It’s great for them.

It might be good for you. 

To a point. 

To learn the ropes. 

You need to take it from there. 

Markets are such. 

They give each player a unique experience. 

Why? 

Because each human has a unique psyche. 

You are you. 

You should play like you.

That’ll ultimately teach you how YOU can win. 

Winning is also about implementing adapted systems that suit you and your curriculum in every small and large detail. 

Proper winning might take years to manifest after you’ve ironed out all the niggles in your character that pertain to the market. 

I’ll give you some examples. 

It’s taken me twelve years to tune my multi-faceted life towards the markets in such a manner that I now trade regularly. 

It took me ten years to discard all the tech-overload and work with the bare-required-minimum.

Seven years was what I needed to realize that I was my best friend and my worst enemy in the markets. 

Now, if I need to learn something new, I go it on my own. If it’s still out of reach, I get an instructor. Only to the point I can walk alone again. 

When you’re walking alone, you learn to listen to your common-sense. 

Your systems develop inside you. 

As you keep acting, these keep fine-tuning. 

Soon, because you’re persistent, these develop winning ways. 

Wishing you a successful market-foray, whatever market you are in! 

🙂 

Dealing from a Position of Weakness 

When you’re losing… 

… you downsize your position. 

Why? 

To save your corpus. 

You lower the risk. 

Is risk quantifiable? 

You bet. 

Risk is no abstract entity without a body. 

In a trade, your risk is defined by your stop to stack-size ratio and the size of your one position. 

When you’re losing, you either lower the magnitude of your stop, or lower the quantity of your one position. 

Till when?

Till your corpus crosses par and then some. 

At par, you trade normal. 

Normal stop. 

Normal quantity. 

What is normal? 

Depends on you. 

What is normal for you? 

That’s what goes. 

Why the caution when below par? 

Lots works against you at this time. 

Sheer math for example. Downsizing sets this right. 

Emotions. 

Whoever’s got a remedy for those is king already. 

You. 

Your body-chemistry is affected. You’re sluggish. More prone to error. Nobody’s got a remedy for you, except you. Wait for your body to heal before trying out that perfect cover-drive, or what have you. 

Winning or losing in the markets depends a lot upon psychology, chronology, systems, strategy, application and adaptation of style. 

I like to call this “getting one’s meta-game together”. 

Let’s go people. 

Let’s get our meta-games together. 

Then we can scale it up. 

🙂 

Inflammation Anyone? 

Inflammation… 

… needs a reason to be… 

… and a reason to go. 

Let’s talk about the most common inflammation afflicting mankind. 

Sugar induced obesity. 

Human body recognizes Glucose and metabolizes it. 

However, the same human body treats isolated Fructose as poison. 

HFCS, short for high fructose corn syrup, is therefore full of poison. 

HFCS is much cheaper than table sugar. 

HFCS is used in big volumes by the food industry. It’s replacing normal sugar. Everywhere. It’s sheer… poison. And it’s cheap. Very cheap. 

It’s in cola, it’s in ketchup, it’s in almost all processed foods.

What happens to it in the body? 

Well, what happens to poison?

It goes straight to the liver. This wonderful and magnanimous organ tries to break it down. 

One big side-effect of the breakdown mechanism is the triggering of inflammatory enzymes. Body cells then start to swell up to protect themselves from poison. To and fro is impaired. They don’t want poison coming in. Unfortunately, good stuff, like insulin that throws out excess sugar, is also not allowed to enter.  Mankind is poisoning itself to obesity. 

Cut out the HFCS. 

Exercise to shake out inflammatory mechanism. 

See how your inflammation vanishes. 

Now let’s talk about the most common financial ailment afflicting mankind. 

Debt. 

We are in debt. 

We take more debt. 

We surround ourselves with useless paraphernalia, to ward off reality. 

Inflammation, again, disguised, but inflammation. 

Ultimately,  the mountain of due interest buries us under it. It chokes off our air-supply, just as obese cells produce “bad” lipids that deposit as mountains of plaque in our arteries, and choke off our blood supply. 

Let’s nip the problem in the bud. 

Like no HFCS – no debt. 

Craving for sugar? Fine. Control. To a point. Still craving. Fine. Have. But have normal sugar, along with fibre. Don’t have anything that contains HFCS. Shake off the relatively minor inflammation caused by normal sugar with exercise. You’re good. 

Longing to spend money? Control. To a point. Still longing to possess that something? Fine. Save. Consolidate. Accumulate cashflow. Only use debt when upcoming cashflow nullifies it in very foreseeable future. You’ve gotten your something, and you’re either debt-free already, or are going to be debt-free very soon. 

You’re good. 

🙂 

Looper

I know, that Bruce Willis sci-fi movie… 

… is also called Looper. 

Know any other Loopers? 

There’s one in your body. 

In hardware terms, it’s your brain. 

In software terms, it’s your mind. 

Its ability to loop can become a tendency. 

Any problems with that? 

Sure. 

Big ones. 

Imagine a trade. 

Goes wrong. 

You’re drained. 

You get out. 

Loss.

Done? 

No. 

At this point, don’t let your mind loop. 

It will, if you allow it the leeway. 

If it loops, you’ve lost the energy value of two trades or more (fatigue) while losing one trade. 

Don’t delve on the loss. 

Move on in search of your next winning trade. 

Define conditions that stop your mind from looping. 

For example, when entry value is small enough to not be bothered about, its partial or even full loss might not be enough to cause your mind to loop. 

And that’s the position you want to be in. 

No looping.

No overthinking. 

Just trading. 

🙂

Anyone up for a Quereinstieg?

Yeah, another German word.

And it’s loaded. 

I love the German language for it’s ability to combine words so that they can deliver a fistful!

So, what does it mean?

Quer means at an angle

Einstieg means entry

If you bang with something head-on, you’re likely to rebound. 

If you chisel into something at an angle with great force, you are likely to enter that something. 

That’s the logic. 

And it works. 

Albert Schweitzer, was it?

The multiply famous nobel-laureate who proposed and demonstrated Quereinstieg into fluency with a foreign language?

The formula was, for weeks in a row, to read texts, delve into media, the whole works, all in the foreign language, without really understanding what’s happening at first, and then getting a hold of the language’s structure through Sprachgefuehl, or feeling for language

Within a month or so, one would be speaking the language. One’s skills would be enough to get by on the streets. Works. 

Sprachgefuehl in action is a prime example of Quereinstieg

These are fast times. 

Almost the whole day, one is multitasking. 

And then, something new comes along. 

A new problem. 

One has to find a solution fast. 

There is no time to start from scratch. 

All other matters must be pulled along. Many people’s daily lives and routines hang upon you pulling your load. 

So, where does that leave you?

Cut to Quereinstieg.

You delve into the new matter, fast, at an angle, without bothering how you’ll fare.

You keep all your faculties open.

Your senses are on high alert.

You use your common-sense.

You learn from the play.

As you keep playing, on and on, you master technique.

The matter is not a problem anymore.

You incorporate the new asset into your repertoire as you attack your daily routine with renewed vigour and an arsenal boasting your latest Quereinstieg conquest. 

From Strength to Strength 

Baby steps… 

… into freedom. 

What kind of freedom are we talking about? 

Universal freedom? 

If you insist, smarty, but first things first.

Financial freedom. 

That’s the kind of freedom that sparks off every other kind of freedom. 

Our first and foremost goal is to achieve financial freedom. 

What is the one big nemesis of financial freedom? 

Debt. 

Tear off debt. 

Detest it with every cell of your body. 

If it comes towards you, move in the other direction.

Don’t allow it’s tentacles to engulf and then strangle you. 

You do all that by nipping it in the bud. 

A new world order in being defined. 

The debt-free… 

… and the in-debt-ones. 

Where do you wish to belong?

The former category calls the shots. 

That’s where you belong. 

Your every move… 

… takes you from strength to strength… 

… towards debt-free-ness. 

Full financial freedom is a short walk from there. 

Story doesn’t stop there, sure, your strength-momentum sees to that.

However, it’s the first debt-free million that’s always the hardest-fought, and the most-fondly remembered.  

How much is too much? 

Risk? 

Sure. 

No risk no gain. 

However… 

… I’m sure you’ve also heard… 

… “want gain not pain“.

How do we achieve that? 

It boils down to the level of risk. 

How much risk is too much? 

Do we have a measure? 

Sure. 

Meaning, without getting into any mathematics?

Yes. 

What’s a hands-on everyday TomDickHarry dumdum yet practical cum successful measure for risk without any hype or brouhaha? 

Sleep. 

Sleep? 

Yeah. 

How? 

Are we sleeping well? 

Is our sleep getting disturbed because of the risk we’ve taken? 

No? 

We’re fine. 

The risk we’ve taken is bearable. 

It’s not disturbing us enough to disturb our sleep. 

Yes? Sleep disturbed? Because of risk? 

We’ll, too much then. 

Reduce the risk. 

By how much? 

Till your sleep is not disturbed because of it. 

It’s as simple as that. 

What to do with a racing mind? 

Harness it. 

Or, it’ll get you. 

How? 

It won’t stop racing till it finds something of interest. 

Then, it’ll hook on… 

… without caring too much… 

… whether that something’s good or bad.

At that stage, you might not be able to control your mind. 

Control it when it’s controllable. 

Before it’s latched on. 

Before the flow has started. 

Define for yourself the area of flow. 

Actively make your mind connect. 

Regulate your flow. 

Enjoy the harnessed potential of your mind. 

Let’s observe a practical example in motion. 

I’ve actively latched on my mind, among other things, to the stock market. 

The market has many aspects.

I need to take into account most of these, if not all, while picking a stock. 

Sure. 

However, some aspects stand out for me. 

To these aspects I latch on my mind very thoroughly. 

I like it to get a feel for honesty. 

While I’m screening a stock, my racing mind either picks honesty or it doesn’t. 

If it hasn’t smelt and felt honesty after two days of studying the stock, I just let the stock go. 

Some are big on numbers. Some are big on charts. Sure, I look at both. Honesty delivers the final decision for me, though, as in, the crucial blow. 

Instead of resorting to all kinds of nonsense, the racing mind can be taught to become one’s greatest asset.