Wagie wagie get in cagie.
All day long you sweat and ragie.
NEET is comfy.
NEET is cool.
NEET is free from work and school.
Wagie trapped and wagie dies.
NEET eats tendies, sauce, and fries.
The American Dream was, in the 50s and 60s, very close to a promise, or a pact, between the USA and its citizens: study hard, or learn a trade, find a job, and you’ll soon be able to buy a house and a car, furnish it with electric appliances, and start a family, then when you’re old, retire with your savings and your 401k with enough to cruise until you die and leave something to your heirs.
This dream is long dead, the pact broken, and virtually anyone under 40 in the West has no chance of attaining this ever again. Save a few exceptions.
After the global financial crisis of 2008 Satoshi created Bitcoin as a form of rebellion against the unfair traditional finance which was denied a brutal death by bailing out the big firms - in the genesis block of bitcoin is embedded the newspaper headline “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” - Bitcoin, and the subsequent crypto universe sprouting from it, gradually became the world’s craziest, fastest, riskiest but most rewarding 24/7 digital casino.
Millions of young people with nothing to lose but their meager paycheck started gambling away in hope to break their chains of wagie worker who could never hope to save enough to buy a house or a car or start a family, let alone dreaming of retiring one day and go play golf like the boomers.
Fueled by the success stories of a select few who became multi-millionaires from nothing - not everyone using moral and legal ways - and undeterred by the several crashes and bear markets, they keep gambling on coins, chains, farms, nfts, defi apps, hoping to be the next one to hit the jackpot. Or if not the same people, there’s been at least a constant refill of new flesh and cannon fodder to feed the machine.
It’s no surprise, after all, since the last years have seen an insane amount of money printed, so the “music was on” to invite speculation and hazard.
As even the slowest among us have now realised, the music stopped.
We are in a bear market under any commonly accepted definition, not only in crypto but more importantly in the equities markets, the dollar is skyrocketing against other currencies, the bond markets are out of control, etc. It’s not pretty, and more importantly, it’s not over yet.
If you trade crypto for many hours a day, chances are you are too young or in too desperate conditions to have a regular job, or you are trying to balance both.
Since crypto markets run 24/7, it is far too easy to get trapped into the mentality that every moment spent away from the charts and the news is a missed opportunity, especially if you are not just trying to make more money, but are instead desperate to ty and make back some of the money you lost this year already, as is the situation for most of you.
I am here to tell you: DON’T.
First of all, the institutional ingress into crypto trading means that crypto markets now trade with above 85% correlation with traditional markets, and that outside of traditional market trading hours, crypto markets are almost dead, in term of volumes.
Yes you get the occasional weekend “fake” move, or the overnight push/pull, but overall, you can - unfortunately? - now consider the crypto markets to follow trad-fi activity.
Second, and very important, is that you are human. You do not run 24/7, your body needs rest and your mind needs rest. Sounds obvious right? But when is the last time you gifted yourself 8 full hours of good quality sleep?
Trading is a very stressful activity, it involves the brain constantly releasing hormones like adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol. You are not a robot you are a delicate miracle of bio-engineering achieved over millions of years of fine adjustments, and you are pretty much a monkey, made to forage some food, have a nest, make some babies and fight some enemies or flee from some big predator. Your brain did not evolve for you to be bombarded by stimuli on a screen for 16 hours a day.
You need to preserve your mental health.
You will need your brain to last you long wheter or not you’ll go bankrupt or survive until the next bull market (the last one ever?), it is not worth losing your sanity over chasing some money, new or gone.
I tell you: be the wagie, take it as a job, you wake up, you check the charts, the news, you either act on a plan you made previously or you devise a new one, then trade or do research, and at some hour you clock off, like a wagie.
You made money? You lost money? You close your positions, or you place your Take Profit and/or Stop Loss levels, and you stop looking for the day. You are done. You dedicate yourself to your responsibilities or loved ones or friends or family or… yourself. (Side note: maybe learn how to cook a decent meal for yourself)
A useful consequence of this type of discipline is that it also forces you to consider if you are in bad trades: if you feel you can’t go to sleep, or to cook. or to gym, without babysitting your position, it means that you are either in a bad place from your entry, or you are way overexposed to risk and you risk your pnl to retrace to zero or go negative and hit your S/L. This is no good, and having to walk away from your trades can help you re-evaluate if it’s indeed a good idea to stay in those or cut them loose.
Good luck anon, see you at the millionaire club or at McDonald’s.