Having a lifetime of mental challenges, from high functioning autism to Asperger's, to not understanding people in general, the only true challenges has been me against me. From 40 years ago, have always seen this as a game, how to become better each year, gain knowledge that I didn't have last year, I can care less of comparing myself to others, half the time takes me weeks to understand people abusing me. Couple decades of working 40 hours for government and 80 hours a week in trading, hide in my house cept for groceries and going for medical, prostate cancer came back, more doctors and treatments, nothing changes, including the markets. Nothing changes.
I disagree with Musk working smart. A smarter worker would have found a better way to source supplies and scale production. And I never said Bezos and Buffet didn't work hard. Just that you can't equate hard work with smart work. I work to live. I do not live to work.
Agreed. I work 40 hours a week, plus another 10 hours in traffic a week, 5 days a week, family, etc etc..... yet I still find time to take 3 to 5 trades per day. Andddddd study and practice on days off or after work. You have to be alll 3 : Obsessed, work hard and work smart. Working hard the challenging part. I have worked hard on doing the wrong things in trading for a very long time. I work smart by focus on key things and ask the right questions.
You can combine HARD and SMART in all possible combinations and for each combination you will find poor people and rich people. I worked harder in my life then Zuckerberg, but he is a billionaire and I am not. I know people who live in a village in Russia and work day and night to survive. I work less and have more money. There are more factors then just HARD and SMART.
If working hard was important, I'd trade a 12:30 volume spike (which doesn't exist). Being the smart worker I am, I trade the 2:30 spike. Hard workers come back from lunch early. To the extent that harder workers taker shorter lunches, this should serve as a good proxy for hard vs. smart. I'd also be looking at a reporting bias on this one based on what I presume would be a high correlation with Type-A personalities and visibility as a trader (i.e. more likely to seek publicity and more likely to be a workaholic). Academia is not supportive of this also correlating with success. So the most visible successes and most visible failures will be those working hardest. (I have no data to support this--except the Type-A vs B and success--but it's something I suspect having worked with statistical samplings my entire professional life). Edit: Or another example, when it hits the fan, spreads widen like the Hudson, you're in a full-blown panic looking at a 20% draw-down for the day, what do you do? Busy work pushing buttons? Close your computer and walk away? Steele your nerves and watch? Pull out your panic checklist you made during 15 mins of well considered clarity to put in place when you have 4 hours of pain and panic? Not to say there's a right or wrong answer here, but 'hard' work will probably work against you on a day like that.
"I hate every single minute of trading! I don't trade because I like it, I trade because I have no other choice." 20 + years is just too long to still being doing this! I am older with high blood pressure and heart problems, and its extremely difficult to watch the up and down undulations of the market. The best thing that ever happened to people like me is I.B.'s Bracket Orders and OCA orders. You set your Buy Limit, Sell Limit, & Stop, click transmit and turn the Trader Work Station completely off, and go do something else.
So true. Luck/coincidence is a big part of it, more than people would like to admit. Imagine you implemented a poorly designed long only strategy in 2003 instead of 2008, results could be radically different while the amount of work that went into both was same.