Weekly Nugget of Wisdom #14

Your greatest edge will come from the ‘boring’ things

Welcome to another Nugget of Wisdom! A weekly post I send out every Thursday. These are designed to be short and sweet, a quick read to (hopefully) impart some sort of wisdom, or at the very least to get you thinking about something interesting.

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Your greatest edge will come from the boring stuff

I was a professional poker player for ~15 years. I saw a lot of things, including hundreds of other professionals or would-be professionals that came and went, and I feel like I got a pretty good handle on what it took to “make it”. By and large, the ones that were able to stick it out and consistently win over years all had one thing in common: they were good at the boring stuff.

They weren’t the flashiest players. They weren’t the smartest people in the whole wide world. They didn’t have a photographic memory. They didn’t always have the best grasp on math or statistics or game theory. They weren’t the best at reading people. They didn’t have the best poker faces.

Instead, they were really good at treating their poker career like a business. They kept meticulous records. They logged their results. They studied and reflected on their mistakes. They kept their cool and had a calm temperament. They were patient. They often journaled.

I think being successful in trading and investing in crypto is much the same. The most successful ones usually aren’t trading in and out of 10 tokens a day. They aren’t always the earliest to new trends, or are the ones buying tokens at sub 100k market caps.

Instead, they’re patient, they take their time, they know when not to buy things. They set stop losses and take profit targets (and stick to them), and just generally treat their whole enterprise more like a business than a side-hustle-gambling-addiction.

A non exhaustive list of some of the boring things in crypto are: bankroll management, keeping a trading journal, portfolio review, journaling, being patient, not going on tilt, reading whitepapers and long form research, deciding not to buy something, and just generally remaining cool, calm, and collected.

The reality is that most people simply don’t do these things. They’re either ignorant and don’t know they should, lazy and can’t be bothered, or they’re cocky and think they’re above such boring activities. They think these are the things that inferior traders need to do. Inferior minds. Joke’s on them.

Ask any trader who has been successful for a long time and they will tell you exactly what I'm telling you now – these are some of the most important things and doing (or not doing) them will impact your bottom line a tremendous amount.

Trust me. Your greatest edge will always come from the boring things.