I’m the ephemeral tourist in this world.
I’ve always kind of struggled to find meaning and motivation in life.
When I was in high school and in college, I never felt like there was anything I particular liked or had a drive to do.
I did reasonably well in school. But as graduation neared, I was feeling confused and anxious about finding the one career path that fits me best.
The traditional sense of achievements in life – a house, a car, a family with kids, a job that you stay committed for years or even decades, climbing the corporate ladder – they never really spoke to me.
I didn’t know what I wanted.
So I stumbled for a few years.
I was trained to be a quant in college and in master’s study.
But I felt that was too hard for me. I unfortunately don’t seem to be that intelligent or well-trained to be competing with PhDs in Math, Stats, Physics or Computer Science.
I somewhat abandoned this path by going to a bank and work as a quant analyst but really just a glorified business analyst there, after interning at a trading firm for a few months.
Although I enjoyed my internship as a software developer at the trading firm, building post trade reporting functions, they were unwilling to give me a full time position.
I was on a clock in terms of immigration status back then so I hurried and joined the bank.
It was somewhat of a mistake.
After 2 years working for the bank, despite enjoying my immediate colleagues, the amount of meetings I was attending and the ancient coding software (if you call that coding at all) as well as the tech stack, not to mention the general red tape with banks, drained all my energy.
By then, I somewhat caught a glimpse of what I want.
I realized that I want freedom above all else. I don’t want to be tied down to a corporate job where getting my meal is dependent upon interacting and working with other people and organizations.
I realized that deep within me, I don’t want to be reliant on others for what I need, because that means they could be taken away at a blink.
Reenter trading.
Trading in the financial markets is something that fits my need exactly to a t.
If you are profitable in trading, you won’t ever have to report to a boss or collaborate with a sloppy coworker and wait for something contingent upon their completion.
You would have the freedom to work from anywhere in the world, at any time during the day, as long as you have a computer with internet connection.
You would be mostly shielded from economic cycles, because money can be made in good or bad times alike, of course that is you are able to navigate different market conditions.
The trading career is truly one of those “if you can you can, if you can’t you can’t.
And best of all. It can pay extremely well if you are good at it.
But. It was also one of the most competitive career possible, because of all the above, and also because how easy you can get started doing it (with a laptop and WIFI, and a brokerage account and some money of course).
Remember I somewhat dropped out of the trading game?
Well, technically I dropped out of the quant game, where you kind of work for a company to develop strategies or develop trading software or even any combination of any part of the two.
See the problem with quant job is, companies, i.e. bosses, don’t really want to have you come in and do full stack from start to finish.
Why, you ask?
Well, if you are not so smart, well you probably won’t get hired in the first place because you are deemed unlikely to be successful in this endeavor.
If you are really smart OTOH, and if you developed the strategies start to finish, you could easily copy the entire thing and start up your own trading firm or whatever, and compete with your boss!
Oh my, I wouldn’t want that if I’m the boss now, would I?
So the only real way for me to achieve what I want for my life, really is to work on my own, either do the trading thing manually or somewhat systemically, but really just manually because as a lone person you really don’t have much edge against corporations that can deploy servers and run crazy algorithms.
In fact, as a lone wolf you really don’t have edge pretty much anywhere against corporations in this business.
Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure this applies to nearly all other endeavors in any industry nowadays. What a beautiful time we are living in now.
But regardless, life itself really has no meaning at all.
Whatever meaning you think you can come up with, will ultimately collapse on the fact that every single one of us will die some day, and the earth will be destroyed along with anything that ever lived and even the universe will die of something (either heat death or big rip or whatever) at some absurdly distant future along with anything that ever existed.
So really, we are all just trying to find something that gives us meaning, that makes us feel like we are making a dent in the world, that provides us with a reason to live for another day.
We are all just thrown into this existence and trying to live through another day, which was physically hard back in the days when you are being chased by wild animals that can rip you apart anytime of the day all the while don’t have enough food in the belly, but is so easy right now to the point that we struggle to live mentally. Ironic.
So meaning is whatever you tell yourself it is. If you say something is meaningful long enough and loud enough, you will believe it yourself, and others will believe it too. Cue religion.
I’ve decided to make it my meaning to be successful in discretionary trading. Until then I will just keep on working in this industry to maintain that exposure and ensure a certain lifestyle.
I’ve also decide to create this blog site as something concrete that I can see and the world can see, since watching the market go up and down and sideways all day while waiting for the set-up to trigger is really not giving me too much in terms of sense of achievement.
It feels really nice to write down all my thoughts. I should’ve done this sooner.
Trade and live at your own risk.
The Ephemeral Tourist
May 13, 2025 @ 11pm CST
The Ephemeral Tourist 