Everything Is a Game

The Mental Part of Trading/Investing/Life

There is no such thing as a ‘natural born trader’ or a ‘natural born stock investor.’ The stock market is not a ‘normal and logical place’, either. If you think normally, you will get normal results, in just about anything in life. I’ve been thinking about how trading/investing mindset is not any different than all these other ‘things’ below that we do in life. I listed four tasks, but I could have listed dozens more that are similar. Personally, I found out I use the same mindset for all these things as I do in stock investing/trading, and we will dig into that thought.

• Grocery shopping

• Booking a hotel

• Gambling at the casino

• Buying a car

I wanted to list things other than stock investing to examine if there are any commonalities and if all require the same mindset. One similar trait is there is a problem to solve, or simply just something you need to do. The other similar quality is that all involve money, as many things do in life. What stands out on this list is that trading/stock investing is by far the toughest of them all. The reason for this is because it’s a game that is uncontrollable. No single person can control the stock market. The stock market is unique in that it is a game that doesn’t make any sense. If the stock market made sense, then everyone would average 100% yearly returns. And as you probably know, often the opposite happens in the stock market from what the ‘herd’ thinks. Gambling at the casino comes in as the second most difficult task, because most of that game is out of your control as well. The other three tasks here all, for the most part, make sense. They are relatively ‘easy’ if compared to trading stocks and gambling at the casino. There are levels, it seems. Besides stock investing, these other games follow a script that you can mostly teach yourself, if you just have an internet connection.

Flight simulator

All commercial airline pilots must complete flight simulator training as part of their certification process and recurrent training. Do you think you just read a book on flying an airplane and then go out and fly an airplane from New York to Dallas? Do you read a book on stock trading and then just place a random $2,000 options bet? You need to educate yourself and/or get educated first on whatever it is you want to master. Then, you go in the flight simulator; or in the case of stock trading/investing you can do a ‘paper’ trade first before using real money.

Conclusions

The first rule of Everything Is a Game is to understand that most everything in life is a game. That’s it. That’s what it all comes down to. Play games you know you can win. I’m good at blackjack but would get destroyed if I played poker, because I’ve never played poker nor do I know how poker works. Everything is a game, and you must first know how each game works. This even supersedes actually knowing how to beat the game. You can’t win a game until you know how the game works. You must first understand how any game works. Ask yourself; what am I getting myself into here?

Elon Musk's path to understanding rocket science was not a formal education in the field or any formal education. Instead, he dove into the subject through extensive self-study, fueled by a deep fascination with space exploration. He absorbed information from textbooks, research papers, and consulting with experts, ultimately gaining the knowledge necessary to found and lead SpaceX. If someone that runs an electric vehicle company but had zero space exploration experience taught themselves rocket science and actually launched rockets into space from reading books, you can certainly teach yourself how to book the best/cheapest hotel, save money grocery shopping, or figure out how to make money in stocks.

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