In the Trader documentary, PTJ talks about how he got into trading because in his younger years he liked the stimulation from playing games like backgammon, etc, and a buddy of his introduced him to trading Since that time in the late 1980s, there have lots of advances in the field, esp. with algo trading becoming more widely used and AI becoming more sophisticated: Google Deepmind essentially solved chess and Go; other bots also cracked Texas Hold'em As some of the top PhD graduates in math, physics, computer science, stats, engineering, etc join the field, you could say the average sophistication in the field would have gotten higher. i mean, in the Trader video PTJ's research analyst talked about printing some correlation on a dot printer, but that's like what high schoolers learn to do with 2 minutes on microsoft excel nowadays So is trading the most intellectually stimulating/ challenging thing you have ever done? If not, what would be the #1? Trying to crack the horseraces like this guy, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code?
Met someone recently , who had extraordinary dunker kruger aura on him. Guy was thinking, that to buy shares, you had to be, physically, present yourself, in a bank or brokerage firm ,to write down a contract. Also , that one has to got at least $50 000, to do that ( by him, you can't buy just 20 or 30 shares of KO ) All of the deals bellow $50 000 were regulated by authorities , that regulates gambling. I could continue on and on, but that just ridiculous. And he didn't look like someone dumb, had some deep knowladge in other fields, yet when it came to stocks, none of my arguments could get trough, his ,, i know it already " mindset wall. ,,Get away from close minded people, as fast as you can " R.D
Yes, along with macro economics reading... When I discovered the truth about the markets, I got hooked. It seems to be one of the few things in life that keeps me mentally on my toes, due to the sheer amount of daily reading required, things are constantly evolving. It's the mental stimulation
Trading is an exceptional challenge, but as much emotionally as intellectually. In other fields, the intellectual challenge was simply acquiring and retaining information and connections. The more we knew, the more successful the task. Those who knew least were paid the least, those who knew most were paid the most. It was only a matter of time and experience to allow progression from the bottom of the first group to the top of the second. Trading ain't like that.
Trading is about creating rules and then following rules again and again and again under all circumstances, basically training oneself to be a machine. It is certainly challenging but I wouldn't call it intellectually stimulating.