Attack the Week (ATW)

On Purpose / Calendar / FX Book Update / Dashboard Analysis / PAAM Asset Allocation

Sunday Thoughts

Everything we do as human beings serves a purpose. Whether we recognise it or not, we are all driven by something: a need, a promise, a responsibility, an ambition or simply the desire to make ourselves useful. It is easy to forget that trading and investing are no different. They may look like purely financial pursuits, but beneath the surface, there is usually something much deeper at work.

So what is the purpose of trading?

I have the pleasure of working with a number of subscribers on a one-to-one basis. Founding members have access to six private sessions with me each year, and most use them to refine their investment process, discuss their career trajectory or get an outside perspective on markets and portfolio construction. Yet when I ask what ultimately drives their pursuit of trading or investing, many struggle to articulate a clear answer.

I was no different.

The obvious answer is to create wealth, achieve independence and provide for our families. Those are important goals, but they are still outcomes rather than a purpose. Money is what may result from the pursuit. It does not necessarily explain why we are willing to devote so much of ourselves to it. Why not do something else instead?

Throughout my career, I have observed that the best and most consistent investors are rarely defined by how they react to individual wins or losses. They are driven by something more enduring. For some, that purpose is spiritual. For others, it is rooted in identity, self-worth or the desire to test the limits of their own potential.

“To become the best version of myself.”

“To discover who I really am.”

There is something almost absurd about the idea that one of the highest-paying professions in the world can reward you for discovering who you are. Yet there is also a great deal of truth in it. Markets expose your character. They reveal your impatience, fear, ego, discipline, aggression, humility and capacity to live with uncertainty. You can hide these traits from other people, but you cannot hide them from your own P&L for very long.

For me, the purpose has increasingly become one of self-mastery. It is about becoming the best investor I can be, given my own psychological make-up, risk tolerance, temperament, strengths and limitations. It is not about turning myself into someone else.

I realised relatively early that I did not need to become Soros, Druckenmiller or Paul Tudor Jones. I will never trade exactly as they did, because I am not them. Nor should that be the objective. The only worthwhile benchmark is whether I can become better than the investor I was yesterday, last year or a decade ago.

That improvement compounds. Better decisions lead to better habits. Better habits create a better process. A better process gives you a greater chance of fulfilling your own potential. If, at the end of the journey, I can say that I came close to becoming the best version of myself, that will be enough.

In absolute terms, that matters far more to me than how I compare with anybody else. It should matter more to you as well.

That is also the purpose of this publication: to make both me and my readers better investors by sharing education, frameworks, models, strategies, and honest reflection. Not to manufacture certainty, and certainly not to pretend that there is one correct way to trade, but to help each of us build a process that is more rigorous, more self-aware and more suited to who we really are.

The mission is clear.

The only question is whether you share the same vision. If you do, I would suggest joining the pack.

I will have more thoughts on the elements above. As I am nearing 3 decades of investing as a career, I will share some of my most important reflections and lessons with readers in the coming months.

Let’s now look at what we do before every trading week: check the calendar, analyse the latest dashboard output, review Macro D’s latest work and trading results in his Macro FX book, and check the latest asset allocation output.

Let’s go!