Side-Hustling

You’ve started a…

…side-hustle…

…and are still thinking it through.

As in, why go through the rigmarole of starting a new thing, …

…when you’ve gotten another – main thing – going, …

… and, the main thing is lucrative, engrossing, sizable, and on auto.

Right.

What’s the key phrase here?

On auto.

Yes.

You said it yourself.

Why disturb the peace?

Let it remain on auto.

That’s what it likes best.

An important big-wig did say, that the most money was made by sitting.

Think the big-wig was right.

Boils down to what you are doing while sitting.

Don’t wonder why.

Just do your side thing.

Distract yourself away.

That’s the purpose of your sideology.

What, you thought you would make money out of your side-o-nomics?

Hmmm.

Not a bad thought.

Not going to happen in a jiff, though.

You’ll need to refine away, and play it without any pressure.

A side game that demands quasi constant attention, as in three odd hours a day, cumulative, and enough captivity of your interest, such that you don’t feel like looking at the main-frame during market hours – that’s what would solve your purpose.

The side stuff has now allowed your main stuff to compound unimpeded.

Isn’t that a big thing?

What, you want more? Right, thought so.

You want this constant-attention-captivator to yield an income.

Knew it.

You couldn’t just let it go, right?

Knew you’d react like this.

Compounding wasn’t enough, now that you’ve had your cake, you want to eat it too.

Just keep it at distraction, no?

No.

Ok. Let’s work on how. Hone. Fine-tune. Start slow. Paper-trade first. One year. Two years. I know, not the same thing. No actual money involved makes the effect negligible. However, your AI keeping ledger of your paper trades makes it feel more real. You see graphs and numbers go up and down, coloured flags flaring, and you port into a whole new world.

Losses translate into small profits. System versions bump up weekly on the AI. Eventually, consistency, the holy grail that your system seeks, is achieved.

Hurray, your system is profitable. Happy now?

I knew you wouldn’t be.

I knew what you were going to say.

Now you want the sideH to scale up, right?

Overtake the main cash cow, right?

Possible, possible, but why? Be happy. Enjoy your ride. Mains working, sides working, brilliant sunshine, 22 degrees, mild breeze, what more can you ask for?

Once the sides become the mains, life will have no breathing space.

So…

…careful.

Distraction

Fooling the people…

…all the time?

For how long?

What’s the historical precedent?

Did anyone get away with such behaviour…

…forever?

No.

No one…

…ever…

…has gotten a free pass…

…to indulge in reckless actions, …

…insulting the entire world’s intelligence, …

…obstructing the earning power of all but self, …

…the king with no clothes, …

…with obnoxiousness at its peak…

… ad nauseam.

Since nothing seems to be happening, as in there seems to be no change in the situation, and things keep taking a turn for the worse after showing some signs of healing, what’s the recourse?

We bide our time.

Time turns the table.

We hone our skills.

Silently implementing our long-term work, we dabble with the new kid on the block, AI, to create new systems. We work at seamlessness. Connectivity. Automation. We’re working at 25x. Thanks to AI. From a complete skeptic, these last seven weeks have turned my tide towards areas which were but a dream.

There was a pinpointed trading system I wished to implement. I’ve spent my years learning many skills, but not the languages and infrastructures to create such trading systems. Not required now. I don’t need to know anything about programming languages and such infrastructures. Creation is now about dialogue. A sincere dialogue with Claude, over seven weeks, has resulted in a multi-layered, automated trading system, semi-seamless, in that order yes or no is still in the hands of my human self. I can make the system completely seamless, have kept it semi out of sheer choice, just saying. Even things like app to app connectivity are completely handheld by the AI, till successful completion and implementation.

System will not go live till required success rate is hit consistently. Tracking and understanding performance has now become a breeze. Fine-tuning, almost daily, is a religion. All thanks to the AI. One must give credit where it’s due.

Now, why, for a long-term investor like me, does the question even arise?

Why even create a trading system?

Income?

That’s one reason. Main reason for me?

No.

So, if income is not the main reason, then what?

Distraction.

Distraction?

Yes. I wish to take my attention away from my long-term portfolio. Perhaps open this once a month, on a weekend. Operate through GTTs only. No interaction at all during market hours. Forget. Switch off. Out.

Why?

No focus means no action. That’s the space where we want to be. We will act once a month, and that should be good enough. Give the long-term a chance to become very long-term.

So you’re saying that your attention remains on the video game action.

Yeah. Working life is punctuated by the video game action of trading. Seamlessly, with max automation except actual buy and sell implementation. In fact order is fed into trading account through the AI itself. The implementation angle is the money loading from my end. Without fuel, the order is rejected by the trading platform.

Wow.

Yeah.

A whole new world.

Yeah.

25x seems right.

Yeah.

So a lot of people could be doing the same thing as you right now, right?

Yeah.

Where’s your edge?

It’s how you handle after entry. That’s where the edge is. How you manage. How you exit.

And how?

Hey, that’s the edge, remember. Not going to give that away. That’s my hard earned edge over more than two decades. Earn your own edge. There’s no substitute for diving in.

Could somebody replicate your edge through AI discussion and development?

Others could develop an edge, yes, through AI. It won’t be my edge though. I don’t care what others develop. I’ll just keep honing my edge and making it sharper day by day, trade upon trade, tirelessly. My edge will keep adapting.

What’s the end outcome for you, from this exercise?

Well, ideally, for me, the tool that I’m creating for the sheer purpose of distraction, shall then go on to yield…

…regular income.