I saw this post on Max’s Telegram channel @affiliatediaries.
In it, a trader shares his journey and what he wishes he had known 20 years ago. The post is from early 2020. It’s very long and somewhat tedious in places. The author seems slightly upset and in a state of melancholy—content on the surface, yet not quite.
I’ve summarized his most important key points below.
- Money isn’t made on Bitcoin charts moving up and down, but on instruments hidden from plain sight. That’s why an experienced trader has accounts with at least 30 brokers and studies various financial instruments. The analogy with websites is: don’t squeeze into where everyone else is. The competition there is too fierce. Look for something nobody is watching.
- Forex in currency assets is an unpromising up-and-down game for beginners.
- Scaling to large sums happens at the right moment when the market is booming—like 2017 and 2019, when US stock indexes broke all records, stocks skyrocketed (BYND, TSLA, AAPL, and company), metals shattered every chart (see palladium and rhodium), and several currencies broke out of their ranges. Thanks to CFDs, guys in the know pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, leaving many in utter disbelief.
- In 2019, there was a strong upward trend, so those shorting the S&P 500 lost a lot of money. Don’t fight the global trend.
- To turn $5,000 into $500,000, you need to pick not only the right timing, but also have the information on WHERE to enter. Opportunities like that come along once in a generation.
- Capital shouldn’t be spent. It needs to be reinvested. Ideally, personal spending should come from side or minor income (or put into real estate). Any amount withdrawn from the market sets you back months, even years.
- Social stratification is very severe, which is evident in the markets, so it’s best not to discuss your income. There are many poor and bitter people around.
- Don’t help friends out of pity because you have a lot and they don’t. Their arrogance and pride won’t allow them to admit their mistakes, and they’ll end up right where they started. You’ll just be left with a bad taste in your mouth: «Basically, this story has repeated itself time and again with many of my trader buddies; I’ve walked that road myself, and damn it, it’s terrible, ridiculous, and embarrassing to even talk about. And the ending is obvious: you drop your ‘old pals’ in anger, and then spend the evening drinking wine feeling completely upset. As they say, the sucker in you is destined to suffer, no exceptions.»
- Traits of successful people: they are curious, tenacious, with the gravity and desperation of people who have nowhere to retreat in their eyes—everyone’s feet are to the fire. They love trying new things, aren’t afraid to make mistakes, grind for years without sleep or rest, and eventually succeed.
- A person’s potential is clear from just a couple of questions, and there’s no need to push them if they’re content with their routine life. That’s why you shouldn’t try to help friends—they’ll figure it out themselves if they really need to.
- In the CIS, a slave mindset has been formed—you can’t step outside permitted boundaries, children are frightened, and parents constantly yell at them. In the West, there’s a different imbalance—everything is allowed, so no backbone is formed. Abroad, our fellow citizens can be heard from a mile away: if an unhinged scream of a mentally ill person rings out in the distance, it’s a Russian mom yelling at a child who dared to do «something wrong.»
- When such a person enters international, ultra-competitive markets that demand fighting under harsh conditions, they simply lack the grit required to cope. They have neither mental flexibility, love of freedom, nor critical thinking (or brains in general), which are desperately needed to filter information streams and analyze massive volumes of financial data.
- They are drawn only to gurus and easy holy grails, simple googled strategies, because this is an immature person dreaming big without a shred of self-criticism. Consequently, they will lose everything and keep losing for years. They lack self-control, self-sacrifice, and the strength to stand up when the market beats them like a nobody—which we all are before it—and they simply have no qualities for eventual success, nor will they ever acquire them.
- An atmosphere is created where it seems everyone around is making easy money, but in Russia, there are only a few thousand professional Forex traders (i.e., people who consistently pull money from the market for years). They don’t hang out in forums or chat rooms (where only newbies gather), but often get acquainted through mutual contacts and various events (like Cyprus meetups), including through brokers.
- A trader is conditionally invited into a closed community, and networking begins to work for them. Needless to say, there is zero chance of getting in off the street, so the poor souls who pay for «secret Telegram chats with trading gurus» evoke the traditional… nothing.
- The author strongly pushes the idea that money shouldn’t be spent on cars and apartments because it sets you back in trading, and through this mindset, he lost a lot—family, relationships. He emphasizes that everything comes with a price, and trading is exactly that kind of field. Capital must constantly be expanded.
- Sexist attitudes towards women bleed through his words. The individual is quite cold and calculating, refusing to let strong emotions into his life. He admits that most traders are introverts with weak communication skills. Just like webmasters. 😄
- Networking is key, which makes communicating at conferences and connecting in person invaluable.
- Real profits are brought only by «trades on blood,» once described on Vayder. That’s when the world goes to hell, and you surf right on top of it. For instance, during the 2014 Maidan, Ukrainian real estate plummeted to rock bottom—absolute bottom! The capital was burning, while people in the know were already browsing OLX. Those who weren’t scared off made crazy, unbelievable profits later. An apartment one kilometer from the center could be bought for pocket change; a two-room flat in a good area went for $9,000. Now those square meters have skyrocketed with yields over 500% (even now during the war, real estate prices are higher than pre-war, displaced people inflate the market, note by Medved).
- Once again, the idea of self-sacrifice permeates his words: The market demands sacrifices, always—a piece of your soul. It hungers for worship; on its altar, you must throw something vital to you. Health (which will haunt me for the rest of my life), sanity, friends and wives, money, and your favorite bicycle. It is interested only in people with nothing to lose, people at rock bottom who crave reaching the top of this devilish temple until their mouths bleed.
- Everything has a price. To gain something, you must give something up.
- You should enter the market with large sums while maintaining low risk: People go into the market to grow their capital with minimal possible risk. To scale it. Not to achieve a fairy tale from scratch. No account boosting or dreams of millions from a grand will end well; they are statistically doomed.