Aug 26, 2022
What I learned in 3 years trading on Wall Street
No place in the world matters as much as the eight blocks between Broadway and the East River in Manhattan. If something big is happening somewhere on Earth, it was a trade on Wall Street that gave it life. From its humble beginnings as a mom and pop slave market to its contemporary renown as an arena of bullpens where America’s most successful and orneriest trade dollars for promises that a straight line will stay straight, this is and has been the epicenter of wealth and power for centuries. And for the last three years, this world was my oyster. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to make it on Wall Street, take a few tips from someone who’s been making a killing and thriving on the most valuable half-mile in the universe.
- Early mornings, late nights — Steve Harvey said “Rich people don’t sleep eight hours a day”, and I can’t think of anyone with a more reliably-built and followable path to success than the host of Family Feud. More hours awake means more hours to work. Psychology says the brain starts to shut down under conditions of prolonged sleep deprivation, but a hundred years ago psychology said you think your mom’s hot. So.
- Location, location, location — Sometimes where you’re working matters more than what you’re working on. Yes, Millennials and Gen Z, that means going into the office. Working from home doesn’t offer the same necessary amenities as working on location, like water coolers, faster internet connections, and better-educated interns from whom you can steal investment ideas. It’s called Wall Street, not Wall Bedroom.
- The Blood of the Covenant Runs Thick Through God’s Chosen Few — If you know, you know.
- It’s all about the hustle — One of the best-kept secrets of money making is this: you have to become your job. Every aspect of your life should be tailor-made for the purpose of earning money. Every friend and family member who isn’t invested should be cut out immediately. Any hobby that isn’t adding digits to your bank statement should be scrapped. Each minute of every conversation that doesn’t directly lead to financial gain is a waste of time. Embody success, discard vestigial emotion.
- Everything that is has been foretold — All turns of fortune, from chancing upon a quarter in the street to the fall of financial empires, are foretold in the Breathing Tome of Aftonach. Readers of my blog are always asking me how I came to possess the flesh-bound omnigraph. Other finance influencers will tell you that you have to sacrifice your firstborn infant on the eve of the thirteenth sabbath or murder your mother in front of your father, and although they’re not entirely wrong, these are outdated and cumbersome paths to enlightenment. Self-made millionaires are mavericks, and sticking to the well-trod path is the surest shortcut to failure. I went my own way, hunting for months through the salt flats of Al-Jazira in Upper Mesopotamia before falling upon the long lost (and heavily cursed) Tomb of Aftonach. When my team and I entered, there were seven of us. By the time we reached the burial chamber, there were three.
I promised to never tell what I saw there, and in return, the living book entrusted in me the promise of true prosperity. In each stock chart, in each financial graph, I see the lines of eternal truth radiating both from heaven above and molten sheol below. Each rise and fall of the market is but a premeditated ebb and flow orchestrated by the axes of fate visible only to those who share in the flesh of the one dark truth. Despair not, men of mortal eye, for though Aftonach’s book is mine own and only blood will part me from it, legend tells of many sons with their own tombs; the man with inner wisdom enough to locate one and rend from his living brothers the truth of the long-past and damned can too find success.
So there it is. The secret’s out and now you too know what it takes to make it in the world of competitive finance. If I can do it, you can do it. What’s stopping you?
