Those of you who fancy zen know the parable. For those who don't, a novitiate asked a master "What did you do before you achieved enlightenment?" "Chop wood, carry water." "What did you do after you achieved enlightenment?" Well, now you know the punch line. Why do I post this? Because I want to disabuse struggling traders of the notion that trading success will have the secondary benefit of changing them for the better. Admittedly, I took the route of systematic algorithmic trading, which does not require one to develop the divine immanence Jack Hershey implies is necessary. Sure, I had to develop SOME discipline to get to this happy state, but now that I have it made I have gone back to my long accustomed slovenly disgusting self-indulgent ways. My goal always was to be utterly undeserving of success.
Indeed it is easy to develop a fatalistic attitude, especially if you have been married as many times as I have. But I believe in reincarnation, and that this life is training wheels for the next. It is widely believed in reincarnation circles that it is fiendishly difficult to carry forward wisdom. My goal in the next life is to remember my trade setups and to stay away from my exes.
Do you believe you might be reincarnated as another kind of animal? Or you could only be reincarnated as a human?
Seems to me that the OP's first post in this thread can be boiled down to this: Now that you're so smart, how come you're not rich? Being smart is fine, but it doesn't mean riches are imminent. One of the best quotes I've ever read, anywhere, came from a poster here on ET. "For every IQ point over 100, add 6 months of learning time." Many of us here are too smart by half, and get in our own way. Just a thought.