There isn't anything I could add to THIS discussion. It's entire premise is so off the wall it isn't even funny. It has absolutely nothing to do with trading nor psychology.
Not directly, HolyGrail. Any mental exercise will help your trading. I personally like crossword puzzles. This game is 90% mental. Indicators are a mere 10%. As it is said in the military, any hardship, whether directly related to warfare or not, is "good training"
Let's think about it. if you were to rob a convenience store, how would you go about it? Use violence or stealth? What is your risk (10 years in the clink) vs reward (maybe $200 cash and free ciggies) Too much risk with absolutely no upside. Are we taking trades because the squiggly lines say to do so? WHY are the squiggly lines saying to do so? Crime and trading are both sides of the same coin. BOTH are high risk high reward professions. Most criminals get caught or killed. Most traders go broke. Still don't see the correlation?
If most criminals get caught or killed and most traders go broke why would one want to learn from the other? They both have consistent negative results. If you want to be successful at ANYTHING, you should learn from successful people. Success breeds success. Role playing yourself as a criminal IS NOT going to have the desired results you are looking for. If you don't have the tools or information to be successful then you won't be successful. It's pretty simple. And just for the record trading does not have to be high risk. Risk is the ONLY thing we can control. It is the least of my worries in any venture I pursue.
Crime is a high risk endeavor. There were successful criminals a la Al Capone & John Gotti. They evenually got caught but had successful careers. Jesse Livermore traded successfully. He comitted suicide in the end. In crime, you either get jailed, get dead, or get burnt out. In trading, you either get broke or get burnt out. Trading and crime have neagatives from the outset. And if you get through all that, what have you really accomplished?
If you don't die as a success, I would have to say you were not successful. It's how you end up, not the road travelled, because the road travelled is always under construction. There are people currently living under bridges that were very successful at one time or another. Controlling risk and preserving capital is the name of the game. Trying to take an account from 5000 to 5 million is just fools play.
\ Livermore did not kill himself due to his investment strategy. That is a big difference. Killing yourself due to a downturn in the market/investments and taking your own life out of mental illness/defect or factors outside of the markets/investments is not "getting burned out". Face it, most (if not all) criminals are stupid, hence the reason they're criminals. There are very few criminal masterminds, and of that there are even fewer criminal masterminds that go free until the very end. Most if not all criminals are caught or killed, so I agree with other commentators, looking towards a criminal or his/her enterprise for guidance in life or investing is a losing proposition. And for the most part this question in general is pretty lame. Probably a good way to go broke would be trying to emulate hoods that usually don't even have enough money to pay for a roof over their heads much less have capital with which to trade.
We're getting off track here. The question isn't, Which criminal would you look to for trading inspiration? It is (beacuse of course we all think we're pretty smart) how would YOU run a criminal enterprise? No different than asking how would you spend 1 billion dollars or which celebrity would you like to go out with. It exercise the imagination.