Trading Success: From Riches to Rags & the Rise to Wealth Mogul

Trading Success: From Rags to Riches or the Brink of Poverty

May 09, 2024

Riches come to those who seek it & poverty to those who chase it. Sol Palha

Because they are relaxed and not in a rush, that’s what most novice traders need to learn. Do not rush; do not push for results; find an opportunity and let the opportunity work for you. In the interim, read a few good books and take the time to study. Point and case: when Bitcoin was first recognized as a potential investment, it did little for a long time after early adopters got in.

However, when it finally started to move, it moved like a rocket. In less than a year, it had surged from being worth mere cents to thousands of dollars. Was it not better to buy and wait after the main investment criteria were fulfilled? It experienced severe corrections, was put in a bottom formation, and, most importantly, the masses ignored it. Almost no one was talking about it in its early years.

The same can be said for companies like AMD, which once struggled in the market. Investors who recognized the potential in their technology during its undervalued periods and held onto their shares have been rewarded as the company regained its footing and its stock price soared.

The critical takeaway is patience and the ability to accept an investment through the ups and downs. Recognizing that the market will have its cycles, but a well-chosen asset will come out on top, in the long run, is the essence of trading success: the calm, strategic accumulation of assets when undervalued and the patience to wait for the market to recognize their true worth.

Trading Success: The Power of a Wealthy Mindset

It’s far more essential to have the mindset of the wealthy and to attempt to vault from poverty into riches. Is it the money that makes you happy or the perception that you have cash? Look at it this way: if you were locked up in someplace in a third-world country with almost no money to spare and just barely enough food to eat. Would you then not consider yourself rich if you were given a simple job, a car, a house and a computer? The funny thing is that most people already have this and much more; the sad part is that many people in these 3rd world countries struggle to survive under a dollar a day.

Remember the saying “misery loves company”, to which we added “, and stupidity simply demands it”. Why don’t we say happiness loves company or intelligence demands it because it’s not true? Individuals usually do not like winners. They start to get jealous when someone talks about winning, or they feel upset when someone is pleased. The reason is simple: they are envious because they would like to be like this person. But they do not know how to make this correction; they do know how but don’t want to try. This brings us to another TI saying: “Life is not bad or good; life just is; our perceptions oscillate from bad to good”.

Riches and trading success, just like happiness, are a state of mind.

It’s within our capacity as humans to shift our perceptions and, by doing so, immensely improve not only the state of our lives but also our financial outcomes. Yet, despite the potential for trading success, most choose to wallow in sorrow and misery. Opportunity is forever knocking on the market’s door, but most investors fail to open the door in time. And when they do, they are often too late, waving goodbye to a chance that could have led to significant gains instead of welcoming it with strategic action.

Take, for example, the investor who sees a market downturn and recognizes it not as a disaster but as a buying opportunity – this is the embodiment of a wealthy mindset. Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, famously said, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” It’s this contrarian approach that has led to his immense success. Buying quality stocks during the market panic, he capitalizes on fear to build wealth.

Every disaster, even the most painful market corrections, brings incredible opportunities for trading success. Most people fail to see this because they have been trained to focus on pain and misery—the losses and the could-haves. What is even sadder is that they concentrate on this pain and do nothing to alleviate it. If you are going to fixate on market downturns, for heaven’s sake, use them as a learning experience to improve your trading strategy.

At the very least, try to help yourself or those close to you by sharing insights and strategies for trading success. But instead, many sit there like donkeys, wailing and hoping that luck will change their fortunes, seeking pity rather than taking decisive action. In this way, a lifetime of potential trading success is wasted in misery and pain while inadvertently dragging as many other innocent bystanders as possible into this tragedy.

The key to a wealthy mindset and, consequently, to trading success is action. It’s about making informed decisions, learning from the markets, and adaptability. As the legendary trader Jesse Livermore once said, “The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world.” But it’s not just a game; it’s a battle of wits, psychology, and patience. Those with a wealthy mindset understand that trading success is not just about making money; it’s about making the right decisions at the right time and constantly learning from the wrong ones.

Stock Market Timings: Learn From Past Mistakes

Do not chastise yourself for past mistakes, but learn from them. Ask yourself why you did what you did, and then write this down in your trading journal. The tragic part of most people’s lives is that they can dedicate so much time to preparing themselves for a particular career. However, they spend a tiny amount of time trying to understand themselves better and how the mass mindset operates. It can be stated that most people live and die without really knowing who they are and what they want.

People are born happy and usually die miserably as they have forgotten all the fundamental tenets of happiness. Remember the times as a child and young adult when you could laugh at almost anything, and life was, to some extent, a joy. Now look at where most people are; they are sloughing away to pay for things they don’t need, such as vacationing at some expensive resort. Just because it has some sand and unlimited food does not mean it’s not a prison. You have physically and mentally restricted your movements, and the worst part is that you have done this voluntarily.

Give the Mind a break and take a vacation.

How can staying in such a prison indeed be a vacation? The masses have found a way to lock themselves up somewhere out of their own will. A vacation is not a place where you lock yourself up but open yourself to new experiences. A vacation is when you take your mind away and not just your body. To achieve this, you have to give it something new, something to look forward to. For example, visiting a strange country, taking in the sights and mingling with the natives. Avoid resorts if possible and spend most of your time outside.

When on vacation, spend as little time as possible at the Hotel

It would be best if you only used the hotel to shower and for a good night’s sleep. For the most part, you should be out and about, interacting with the people, taking in the new sights, savouring the new food. If you do this, you will have a real vacation and immediately open your mind to new possibilities. Investing is all about opening the mind to new possibilities.

Go back to that moment when, as a child, you experienced unadulterated fun or pleasure. Ask yourself what made the moment wonderful. In most cases, they were simple things that money could never buy. Perhaps it was a lovely picnic, a drive in the countryside on a nice sunny day with a loved one, or even alone. Or maybe you tried some new tasty dish, spent time with good friends, etc.

Now notice that as an older adult, if and when you have one of these moments of happiness, how touched you are by them. You feel perfect when it happens; when it’s over, you long for it again. However, I don’t remember you trying to ask yourself what brought it about in the first place.

Stock Market Timings: Focus on The Now & Not The Tomorrow

The answer is straightforward: when you stop acting, stop pretending and allow yourself to be who you are without the disguises, the masks, the pretences and so forth, you put yourself into a position where a ray of light can finally break through the gloom. It’s not hard to have a good time. It’s just hard to see that it’s so easy. This brings us to another TI saying: “Life’s simplicity is what makes it so complex.” Stop trying to learn how to live a better life; start. Tomorrow begins today, and tomorrow never really comes. It was not today, the tomorrow you worried so desperately about yesterday.

Would it not have been better if today could have been the tomorrow you smiled about and looked forward to yesterday? We could speak at length on this topic and probably fill a book with all the points we could make; sadly, we do not have the time to undertake such a massive endeavour on such short notice. The main thing to remember is that happiness is a state of mind. And as my late father Solon Palha used to say, “Happiness is a mind in peace and hell a mind in pieces”.