The Intoxication of Trading
There were stretches when I’d spend a full day running operating companies in Asia—calls, deals, logistics—and then flip the switch at midnight to trade U.S. hours with my hedge fund.
It was the perfect inversion: the rest of the world slept, and I went to work.
To make it harder, I’d do it the way no textbook would ever allow—happy hour in one hand, the millions in the other.
2016: buying USD when no one wanted it, running on no sleep, half adrenaline, half intoxication.
But that combination taught me something priceless:
when you strip away comfort, you start to feel the market’s tempo directly.
You stop thinking in probabilities and start breathing in rhythm.
That’s how you learn to move on hard mode.
Almost no one chooses the thing that looks impossible.
They chase efficiency, comfort, and incrementalism—the polished roads already paved by someone else’s courage.
But intelligence isn’t about optimizing what’s been done.
It’s about finding the thing everyone says can’t be done and making it your playground.
That’s the real game:
Choose the hardest possible version of something consequential, then learn it until it bends.
At first, it feels like punishment—every repetition burns, every failure feels terminal.
But like the gym, you adapt.
You set new personal records not because it gets easier, but because you get heavier—denser, sharper, more inevitable.
People don’t know but I can slay in the gym.
When you master the impossible, everything else becomes a side quest.
Emails, meetings, market noise—they turn into warm-ups, background reps, entertainment.
Because once you’ve taught your mind to lift what it wasn’t built to lift, reality lightens.
I pick the hardest mode on purpose.
I want the resistance—because resistance is what sculpts.
Lesson:
Find the frontier where everyone stops talking and starts doubting.
That’s where intelligence actually matters.