Complete spoiler below...but i wouldn't worry about it. tl;dr: basically a really long suicide note. Not much about trading. Pretty good examples of how being passive can ruin you mentally. In Leo Tolstoys The Death of Ivan Illyich, the main character Ivan, from his deathbed, looks up at his wife and says, “What if my whole life has been wrong?” So I just finished this last night and see benefit in writing a little review...for ET as well as myself to recap and digest the content. Synopsis: Second born into his brother's shadow in the UK, overbearing negative Mother (reminds me of real-life Peter Keating's mom from Fountainhead), alcoholic abusive father, above average academic and sports abilities. struggles with self-loathing at an increasing rate throughout his life. Somehow finds himself trading Crude for a living in a big way...not like CL futures lol...like matching up cargo ships of crude to companies needing the inventory (BP, Chevron, etc...), I believe he started at Vitol but bounced around. Falls in love with a nice girl who enjoyed their travels and supported him through depressive episodes (high level wife material who he wishes he married). Cheats on her with some mediocre colleague...who gives him genital herpes. His love rightly leaves him...he stays with mediocre (basically saying "we have herpes together now so F it) and has 2 kids with her...of course lol. Self Loathing intensifies. Every trade he fucks up sends him into spiral of internal agony. Author is incredibly weak when it comes to women, blaming his mother for his rolling over and always being dominated by his wife. They divorce, he remarries a decent one only she blows money to maintain their lifestyle and has some paranoid tendencies. Bounces around from company to company (he's not exactly sure why he does this and greatly regrets leaving Vitol), eventually unable to return to his career as a pro crude broker as he burned too many bridges. has 2 more kids with 2nd wife then at some point (iirc his 40-50s) he begins trading (like we do) with his considerable savings...literally loses almost all of it because of the same reasons anyone loses money trading. 2nd wife divorces him primarily because he is severely depressed, constantly in agony and tells his wife often he wishes he was dead. Book ends with him essentially saying everything he has done was wrong: career choices, marital choices, residence choices - and he's probably going to kill himself as the world would be better off. whew. So...this book is a pretty good argument for doing WHAT YOU WANT TO DO when you know something is right or wrong then its up to YOU to act. Self sacrifice can be the worst thing possible...we think we are keeping the peace or being altruistic but in the end no one is better off when you face the final 1/3rd of your life full of regret and despair. Altruism is shit if it leaves you in shambles - Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness" still rings true IMO. idk what else to say. First half was engaging and semi interesting, it is well written and reads easy. by the last 1/4 you are really looking for the end. The dudes self loathing is insufferable...he's spending so much time crying about the choices he made, using the past as a bat to beat himself with, you just can't help but to lose sympathy. I know depression is real but at some point its like...bro...you're 40 years old...stop crying and start doing what you absolutely know you should do...stop blaming mommy because your wife mentally pegs you every time you have a disagreement. 3/10 Book. Hard pass concerning trading as well as depression as I just see so little of value here. The book was written essentially as a confession to his children, hoping they understand why he would kill himself. Worthless.
I myself have felt that same sentiment regarding so many things that I've seen. I respect the time that you took to write that out because I found myself getting so depressed reading about their sob stories and excuse making that I thought, why am I reading this? And so then I stopped, but I just wanted to say that I thought the same thing about other similar books and writings by others. And it's crazy how many people don't understand that it is possible to break out of the victimhood mentality, but they don't. They double down on their despair, it's like they get some sort of unconscious payoff from their suffering and double down on it. It's crazy. But anyway, happy trading.
no, alcohol wasn't part of the equation, luckily he missed that genetic sequence. His problem was his relationship with failure...every time he made a mistake he would be overwhelmed by feelings that he was worthless. The bigger the mistake...the bigger the hammer he could swing at his well being. So, I have struggled with this myself and was sympathetic at first. But at some point it just turned into a story designed to convince everyone else that he should kill himself...rather than what it should be -> focus on getting better. I dont have anything against crying...perfectly natural sometimes...but this guy was crying constantly throughout this book. like...man...if you're crying for hours just because you're alive then something is major fucked. But he just found himself becoming numb to reality rather than working towards resilience. Robustness>fragility
a horrifying thought. We should all strive for a life well lived. To experience what we want to experience before we return.