How I look at the World
By now, you should be familiar with Macro D, who has gracefully accepted to be providing his thoughts and visions to your readers.
In this thought-provoking essay, he provides us with a first glimpse into how he views the world as he delves into the complexities of independent thinking, the value of questioning, and the challenge of understanding different perspectives.
Through the lens of a macro trader contemplating the world of finance, his narrative explores the philosophical underpinnings of critical reasoning inspired by figures like Kant and Wittgenstein.
Readers will journey through reflections on intellectual maturity, the courage to challenge the status quo, and the limitations of truly stepping into another's shoes. This piece invites you to reconsider how we perceive and interpret reality, urging an embrace of perpetual inquiry over complacent answers and highlighting the profound impact of individual vision and thought on our understanding of the world.
Sit back, relax and enjoy
Considering myself a miserable human being in the world to account for a mystery called God, I slide gently between the moments of Life that ask me to be correct about Reality.
I like being the last in line. If you are previous, you can learn both from what you see and from what those in front of you do, but if you are the first in line, you can only learn from what you see. In that vein, even the last of human beings are called to make that effort which, if made, allows them to obtain the license of being human, but if circumvented, in this case, destines them to oblivion in which those who, when they read a newspaper, believe line by line, every single line.
What effort am I talking about?
The effort to think independently, to challenge the status quo, and to question everything we encounter.
Kant (not someone who confused the sun with the moon) saw in the Latin motto "Sapere aude!" (Have the courage to use your intelligence!) the original intro of critical reason and thought that through philosophy, man can become "of age" (obviously not in the personal sense, but rather intellectually).
Now, I will hurt myself and brutally ask myself:
However, what is my intellectual age?
Reflecting on my journey, I realize I have learned (often through my own mistakes) to think independently. I no longer accept the words of those who claim to possess otherworldly knowledge at face value. But despite this, I find myself questioning:
What can I truly say about my intellectual age?
What insights can I offer?
I cannot say anything. Intellectual age is not a number to put on the scales of life, but it is that state of mind that accompanies us every time we read or hear something, and instead of immediately making golden bridges over it, we question it.
The intellectual age of a human being is the strength with which she holds the gaze of other people's thoughts, which are addressed to her.
Wittgenstein (another who did not confuse wheat with gold) said, “One could set a price for thoughts. Some cost a lot, others less. Moreover, how do you pay for thoughts? I believe with courage."
Where is your courage? I wonder.
I need to find out where my courage is. I have never followed him, nor have I ever idolized him. I am content with knowing what he is interested in, and I silently enjoy knowing that he is as healthy and stubborn as ever, searching for new mountains to climb and seas to cross.
Like I said, I don't know where the courage is, but I know what it's about. I have no idea where it is, but I know what it's up to.
Courage does what it has always done. Courage thinks big. Moreover, what does it mean to think big? Thinking ample means thinking about the world and then looking at it. However, the world should not be thought of as we think of the instruction booklet of the Ikea furniture that they have just delivered to us, and looking at the world does not mean looking at it the way we look at Taylor Swift performing at the Superbowl before our eyes and those of billions of people.
Thinking about the world means thinking about the origin of something we do not know, and looking at the world means looking at the reflected image of something that does not yet exist.
A thought about the world that is thought about the world with all its trappings is a thought that approaches the world with a touch unknown to it. When we think of it, the world must feel in awe, tremble, blink, and show amazement. A world that does not experience amazement at our thoughts about it is a world that does not recognize in our thoughts the originality of a thought that can make a difference.
It is still; a vision of the world is only valid if it is ours and at home only in our thoughts. A vision of the world is capable of changing the world only if, before finding itself on the launch pad, it has seen nothing other than the world it created and is preparing to display it in the world that belongs to everyone through the sincerity/originality that is unique to those who have a vision of the world because to have it they really cried all the tears in the world and then collected them, one by one, before they melted.
Yes, gaining a vision of the world can be costly — sometimes, it can even cost your life.
Moreover, now that we have traced the path of the unborn child, or instead of our vision of the world, what do we do with the birth of other visions of the world, those opposite to ours?
Let us dig.
My point of view, which is naturally subjective, what does it represent from the point of view of others (the point of view of others is a broader point of view than mine, not because it is necessarily deeper but because it contains within it the points of view of more people than being more than one, consequently they are greater in number than me, who am only one).
Must my point of view necessarily suffer from the presence of other people's points of view? Can it coexist with them? Or must it wage war to gain the highest echo podium?
My point of view, as an overriding necessity of being myself in every step of life, must always be with me, even when I am committed to perceiving the world around me from the point of view of others.
I strive to perceive the world by observing it through the eyes of others, but while I engage in this struggle, I necessarily find myself observing the world through the eyes of others, but still through my own.
If John, the Global Head of Macro Trading at Skymars Bank and colleague of the young Thomas (whom we have already met), asks me to observe his long position on the USD/YEN pair and consequently asks me to evaluate the operation from his point of view, I will undoubtedly oblige John and in doing as he asks, I will evaluate the trade from the perspective he has taken, that is, I will evaluate the macro data that he has analyzed from his perspective and not from mine. However, can I do it all the way?
John believes that the Dollar will continue to gain against the Yen because, from his perspective, the BoJ is not interested in defending its currency. Well, now I am evaluating the trade through John's rationality. However, while I evaluate the data in his possession, which are the same data that I also have, I realize that although his position is as legitimate as mine (which is contrary to his), I am still locked in a liaison of love with my point of view which has led me to take a position opposed to his.
As if this were not enough, I also have the impression that as much as I can succeed in putting myself in John's shoes and succeed in the task of evaluating the data precisely as he evaluates them, I, however, would not be able to complete that last step which would allow me to put myself in John's shoes fully. In fact, in addition to evaluating the data through a specific approach (which I could use with enormous effort), I would then come up against a much more severe reality, that is, to fully put myself in John's shoes, I would have to take on his shoulders all of John's life experience, all his pains, his joys, all his past, as every choice that John (or whoever for him) makes is the result of the journey that John (or whoever for him) has accomplished up to that point.
John may have unconsciously chosen to short the Yen because he is fundamentally pessimistic. He had a bad personal experience with a Japanese trader because his Japanese girlfriend abandoned him and because he tried to learn the Japanese language but failed. In short, John could sell the Japanese currency for many of those reasons that no human mind (besides his own) could shoulder: the weight of a past that contains infinite possibilities within his rooms.
With this reasoning, I, therefore, affirm that the possibilities of why John decided to short the Yen can be infinite, and all these possibilities go well beyond a cultural/professional approach that leads to reading the macro data in a certain way rather than in another.
Well, what I am trying to say is that as socially laudable and necessary as it is, the attempt by a human being to put himself in the shoes of another human being is an "attempt" that will never be successful, in the sense that it will never be able to reach a completeness that is the “firstborn daughter of absolute perfection”. Therefore, there cannot be a human being who is capable of ultimately putting himself in the shoes of another human being since putting himself entirely in the shoes of another human being would require an ability that no human being possesses: the ability to identify, not only in the head of another human being but also in his heart and soul.
Why? When a human being (in this case, a trader who takes a position on the currency market) leans towards a specific solution, he turns towards a particular direction after having explored horizons that are visible only to him, as they are specific horizons from the vital experience that he accumulated in the earthly journey that accompanied him up to that exact point (moment) in which he took a direction.
I can identify with the human being (in this case, John, the trader) and that particular moment and space, but what can I know about the horizons explored by John before this particular moment? Very little.
What can I know about John's experiences up to that particular moment? Very little.
From this reasoning, I derive that a human being can identify with another human being only to the extent that this identification does not require him to go beyond what is possible for him. By this, I mean that I can relate to the vital surface of John's shoes, but I cannot relate to John's hidden depths.
"A man who empathizes with another man is not in reality empathizing/merging with that man, but he is empathizing/merging with the veneer of that man."
To recap:
I cannot completely set aside my perspective, not because my perspective is better than John's, but because to step into John's shoes, I would have to shoulder the weight of his entire life experience, which is impossible to do, for the simple fact that the life experience of others cannot be "experientialized", but only Savorknown [1]. This means that I can know the experience of others, but I cannot experience it. I can be made aware of the experience of others. However, I cannot live/relive the experience of others because to live the experience of others, I would need that specific heart/another's soul/reason that I do not possess.
As a humble observer of financial markets and as a lover of the macro vision that is the fruit of myriads of glances and discernments that find the crux of the matter in the ecstasy of a deep breath and not of a glass thrown against the wall, I contemplate the human brain as a bloodhound hunting for repeating patterns, as these patterns teach us how to respond to a certain event. Moreover, now, let us explain the dynamics through which this hound searches for his being in the world and, therefore, a thought on the world that is a harbinger of a world vision.
Now, let us enter with our humble torch into this new forest where the claws of the night love to leave signs that are tangible only to their interests and not to those of others.
Now, where are the patterns we just talked about? If it rains, I open the umbrella; the path of humanity has taught us that when it rains outside, and there is no cover, we get wet.
Well, the repetition of rain taught us how to respond to rain. Moreover, how did we respond to the rain? We have created experiential regularities in our brain that remind us that when it rains outside, if we do not cover ourselves, then we get wet.
Well, my particular vision, the world as I see it, is inspired by a representation of what happens, which makes itself available to what continually happens inside me.
I find myself in the presence of what happens outside of me, and I respond first of all with what happens inside me, but not in the sense that what happens inside me wakes up the moment what happens in front of me becomes apparent in front of me.
What happens inside me is a perpetual event that reveals itself before me regardless of the moment an external event occurs.
The fact that an external event appears before me draws my attention and forces me to raise my antennas.
At this moment, general thought becomes particular, and my disinterested attention is transformed into interested attention.
In short, when the world knocks on my door, it is not my general thought that opens but my particular thought.
Therefore, faced with an event external to me, my senses organize the environment in which they find themselves and consequently move in the environment where they find themselves based on their characteristics; that is, my senses get busy to thrive.
Let us now review the merits again and then meet for the next meeting.
Moreover, now, let us put all the pieces together and do the math:
We have outlined the structure of a thought that thinks the world and that of a gaze that looks at the world. Then, we have gained a vision of the world, which we have put in line with the visions of the world of others in order to understand whether coexistence between different visions of the world is possible and how feasible the idea is that a vision of the world can be able to dress the tuxedo usually worn by a vision of the world of others.
Moreover, once we have traced the path of our point of view, we accompany him up to that moment of the day in which he feels the urgent need to walk on his own two feet and, therefore, move from general thought to a particular thought.
Well, how did we do all this? What were we based on? What is the approach that has allowed us to look to the future with confidence without the fear of remaining tied to the chains of the past?
Well, our saviour has a name: QUESTION.
The “art of questioning” allows us to quench our breath with the only water capable of recognizing doubt for what doubt is:
A POSSIBILITY.
"Philosophy should be studied not for the sake of precise answers to the questions it poses, since no precise answer can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions broaden our conception of what is possible, enrich our imagination and undermine the dogmatic arrogance that precludes the mind from reflection; but above all because thanks to the greatness of the universe, which philosophy contemplates, the mind also becomes great, and is made capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its greatest good".
- 1912, Bertrand Russell "The problems of philosophy".
I confess that I have not stopped since I started asking myself questions.
"Questions live forever; answers have their time."
How come?
As usual, let us get into the merits of the matter.
Let us take the "Question": Is eating bread good for you?
"Answer": Yes
Let us get to the “heart of the question” and then to the “heart of the answer”.
If eating bread is good for you, it is because, one day, someone on the face of the earth asked himself this question before everyone else and allowed those who came after him to continue to think about it. By asking whether bread is good for you, we have come to ask ourselves to what extent bread is good for us, how to bake bread, and what ingredients to use. Asking yourself if bread is good for you has created increasingly healthier and tastier bread. In short, wondering about bread has improved how human beings feed on bread. Therefore, asking ourselves about the object of our attention can improve this object to which we refer (in this precise example, bread).
And the “answer”? What do we tell about her?
Does the answer have these same commendable prerogatives?
What does the answer do if the question opens new, unexpected paths?
The answer is a risk.
What risk?
"The risk of believing that the beach is the solution is that we might be heading into winter instead, making this a critical mistake."
If I indulge in the well-being created by the answer (which also seems to work well and be in line with my needs), I consciously put to sleep my search for another beach in which to find an answer that works better than the one I just found.
While the question encourages me to overcome myself, the answer pulls me by the jacket and forces me to take a step back. The answer intimidates the intimate human need for perpetual improvement and forces it into the cage of comfort that cradles itself in the laurels of intellectual tiredness.
For this reason, I continue to wonder about every moment of existence, every corner of the world, every corner of the universe.
The question keeps me alive because it allows me to breathe the air that unites my duty as a human being (to make myself a better man every day) to the mystery that hovers over the sunset of every space: a sunset called “eternity”.
In summary: "The question is like water digging until it opens a passage. The answer is like a princess who no longer wants to come down from the throne as soon as she becomes queen and put down the sceptre".
As a human being who looks at the world with his vision of the world, I push myself in search of precious pearls. Even though I am constantly insinuated by a world dazed by the appearance and misunderstanding of freedom and pained by the monstrosity of nothingness and the scourge of darkness, I call myself to join in communion with my conscience. It continually hisses in my ears:
"Keep asking, keep asking, do not stop, do not stop, continue, forever..."
Now that we have assembled the scenography let us prepare to translate the reference points of our “dear financial world” onto the stage of the vision we have set up and humbly ask ourselves about the "Question" whose DNA we have just identified.
So, let us return to the subject. Of course, we have just recognized that philosophy does not leave us indifferent. However, we are still devotees in love with the macro vision, and inevitably, as much as we love Athens and its surroundings, we will soon be called to move to Wall Street and look with respect and admiration at how some of its main protagonists act.
However, how does Israel Englander [2] set up his vision of the world? Does he prefer the dew that covers the question or the dawn that refines the answer? How does he go from general thought to particular thought?
And Kenneth Griffin [3]?, Michael Platt [4]?, And Steven Cohen [5]? And Louis Bacon [6]? And Paul Tudor Jones [7]? and Chris Rokos [8] and Yan Huo [9]?
How do all of them do it?
For now, let us leave ourselves here, in this blink of an eye in history, where I was thinking about the facts when a specific event caught my attention. At this moment, my general thinking abandons disinterested thinking (which thinks for its own business) and opens the door to particular thinking (provoked by an event that has attracted my attention).
I have just changed my environment (I am no longer thinking about my own business but about something that is the result of the event that attracted my attention). My senses adapt/align to the event that has just revealed itself by leveraging who I am, personal characteristics, life experience and emotions.
I am still the same human being, but now I find myself in the presence of an event that requires my being to respond through the voice of my particular existence.
In the next instalment, we will start from this particular point.
From here, we will first ask ourselves how some giants of history would respond/react to this move "from general thought to particular thought". Moreover, after knocking on the door of the giants of history, we will ask them for permission to understand if their way of seeing the world is compatible with our way of seeing trading through a macro vision. I cannot tell you how far we will be able to go, but after all, did Indiana Jones [10] ever know?
After all, in studying how those who think differently from us think, one never gets hurt; at most, one saturates one's brain with questions, enigmas, and grace.
Someone may prefer to stuff their brain with shots of dull and banal certainties [11].
No, I do not think so.
To be continued.
[1] Savorknow: With this verb (image of a reality that does not exist in any vocabulary), here we intend to refer to that kind of knowledge that cannot be considered full knowledge but only partial knowledge. Therefore, we intend to refer to a knowledge that is both savoured (savour) and known (know).
[2] Israel Englander: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Millennium
[3] Kenneth Griffin: Founder and CEO of Citadel
[4] Michael Platt: Co-founder and managing director of BlueCrest Capital Management.
[5] Steven Cohen: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Point72
[6] Louis Bacon: Founder and chief executive of Moore Capital
[7] Paul Tudor Jones: Founder, Co-Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Tudor Investment Corporation
[8] Chris Rokos: Founder of Rokos Capital Management
[9] Yan Huo: Co-founder and chief investment officer of Capula Investment Management LLP
[10] Indiana Jones: Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr. is the title character and protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise
[11] An example of such a thought is that a guy thinks that the life of a trillionaire is more beautiful than that of a billionaire because the trillionaire has more money at his disposal than the billionaire. The same guy thinks that the life of a billionaire is more beautiful than that of a millionaire because the billionaire has more money at his disposal than the millionaire.
“The joys of theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life.”
— Ludwig Feuerbach
“life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”
― E.E. Cummings