Pleasure Versus Happiness | Podcast Episode #410

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Hey, I’m Ryan Mallory and this is my Swing Trading the Stock Market podcast. I’m here to teach you how to trade in a complex, ever changing world of finance.

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Learn what it means to trade profitably and consistently, managing risk, avoiding the pitfalls of trading, and most importantly, to let those winners run wild.

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You can succeed at the stock market and I’m ready to show you how. Hey everybody, this is Ryan Mallory with SharePlanner’s swing trading the stock market.

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So today’s episode going a little bit away from the emails today, I have one planned for you on the next episode.

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That’s e-mail and it’s going to be a good one. But for today, I want to talk about something that came to my mind as I was taking a walk this past evening around the neighborhood and that was short term pleasure versus long term happiness. You might be thinking to yourself, what in the world does that have to do with trading?

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I just want to make money when I’m trading in the stock market. But it has a ton to do with our trading as it pertains to the stock market, and it has a ton to do with life in general. And I think that’s where I started to think about it.

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I thought about choices that we make and what are the motivations behind it, what are the drivers? Often times we will make the wrong decisions in life and we think that the problem is the decision that we made, but it’s really just a symptom of a bigger problem. And so for this podcast, it may feel like that I’m going a little bit off the beaten path here, but bear with me, I’m really not. I’m going to bring it back to trading because I still think that it has a lot to do with trading and that is our motivations for short term pleasure at the expense of long term happiness.

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What are we trying to satisfy? What are we building towards?

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Are we satisfying the pleasures of the short term or are we building towards long term happiness?

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I don’t like flossing, I hate it. I like to brush my teeth and be done in the morning.

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But no, I have to floss too. And why is it?

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Do I necessarily get any benefit from flossing that morning? I can say with brushing my teeth, my mouth feels fresh.

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I don’t feel like I’m wearing my breakfast all over my face after I’m done brushing my teeth. But when it comes to flossing, I don’t necessarily feel the benefits of it.

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But what am I trying to prevent down the road? I’m trying to prevent having diseases, gum disease.

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I’m trying not to get what they used to say back in the day, long in the tooth. So I floss each day and I don’t necessarily like it.

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I think it feels kind of stupid at times, like sticking this little string between every one of my teeth.

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But I do it because there is a health benefit for doing it. And with trading, we want to come back to why are we trading?

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What are we trading for? Are we trying to benefit some short term pleasure some need in the short term or are we trying to build something for the long term?

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You guys know I have different services that I offer and one of the things that I noticed that when people join the trading block, you know, within 30 minutes, people say, all right, what’s the trade? What’s the trade?

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What are you, what are you trading right now? Why are you not trading yet?

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I haven’t got any alerts from you. I need something to trade.

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And what they might be kind of quizzical about is the fact that I can go a couple days and not make a single trade.

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And that’s not unusual for that to happen. Because when it comes to my trading, I’m not trying to fulfill a short term desire or need or the need for action, that pleasure that comes from it.

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I’m trying to build long term happiness.

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I’m trying to build something that’s more than just one trade or like the dopamines that come from, I don’t even know if I said that right, but I’ve heard enough podcasts where they talk about it,

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where this like sensation that you get from a certain action that you take.

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I’m not trading for that.

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Most traders are looking for the action. They’re looking for something big.

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They like to hit the send button for their orders and see that order get filled and then see that they have that position.

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Then they’re looking at the dollars. Why do we look at dollars instead of charts once we’re in the trade?

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Most of the time, after all the technical analysis is done, people just look at the the numbers, the dollar signs.

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And that’s why I say take out the dollar signs because that’s going to drive short term pleasure or pain.

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And what we’re looking for is long term happiness.

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Cheating, cheating on a spouse. What’s the driver of that long term happiness or short term pleasure?

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I would say short term pleasure. You have a person that’s getting caught up in the moment.

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They’re making bad decisions. They know that they’re making bad decisions and they do it anyways.

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Why? Because the pleasure is overriding the happiness.

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It’s the same thing with alcohol. Had a rough day at work.

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You get a few shots of alcohol in you to kind of take away the OR numb the frustrations or the stress of the day.

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It works. I’ve done that before, but I wake up groggy the next morning.

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I’m like, oh man, why did I drink that last night? Especially on a week night, man, you pay for it the rest of the day, your sleep isn’t as good.

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You got the brain fog going, it’s not a good thing.

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You take a person who goes on a cruise line and wants to, you know, look big time at the poker table, place them Texas holdem or blackjack, whatever, you know, maybe it’s the craps table or

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roulette, and they start going all in. They start betting big.

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They want people to see what they’re doing. They want to look like a real player and they lose that money.

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Whereas you take somebody who’s been playing Texas holdem for a very long time or blackjack, they have a system in place.

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They know based off of what the cards are based off of what they have, what the dealer has shown so far.

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There are certain odds, there are certain probabilities and there’s a reward risk system. Very much so like there is with trading.

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And they aim to be disciplined in what they’re doing.

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We have these things in Port Canaveral. We have the, they used to call them Sun Cruise Casinos.

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I don’t know what the heck they call them now.

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But people will do those things and they’ll lose a ton of money. And why do they lose so much money at like Texas Holdem and stuff like that?

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And it’s not that, you know, there’s a surefire way to make money at all these things. I mean, some people will say there are.

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I can’t really say with any amount of confidence. But I do think that the traders that you see on TV, we’ve got a little bit more going for them than just luck.

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There is a system, there’s a strategy in place.

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Do they win every time? No.

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Do I win it every time at trading? Absolutely not.

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But I do have a system in place that allows me to be profitable over the long term.

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They go all in, They don’t. They’re always pushing their bets when they should be folding.

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Why are they doing that ’cause they’re seeking after short term pleasure. They’re trying to score it big.

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Whereas the professional gambler, the guy who’s playing Texas holdem in the World Series of Poker, there is a system in place.

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And when they don’t follow that system, you usually see them come unraveled live on TV.

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And the difference is, is 1 who’s seeking short term pleasure versus the long term happiness and pleasure doesn’t necessarily in in this situation always like in the traditional sense, like like a euphoric feeling or something really great.

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It can be ego driven. It can be getting even my wife when she knows that I’m upset that somebody did me wrong and

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everything. And let’s say I get the person back.

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Let’s say I just, you know, sent A1 liner to him. Have a real zinger.

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She’ll ask me. She’s like, you feel better now?

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In the short term, yeah, I, I probably do feel better. I feel pretty good about it.

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But in the long term, no, I don’t feel any different. I don’t feel better for it.

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It didn’t change my life, didn’t build happiness for me. In the moment, it made me feel good, but in the long term it didn’t.

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And so again, going back to trading, short term pleasure versus long term happiness, Why are we making the trade?

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Let me even back up further. You hear me talk about position sizing all the time.

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Why is that? Why do I always say plan out the trade?

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Plan out the risk, Take the losses when the stop losses are hit. Keep your position sizes the same.

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I’m trying to reduce emotion. Emotion is in the pleasure, the strategy is in the in the happiness.

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That comes from long term planning and discipline. The most successful football teams for instance, where is most of their success found in?

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It’s from building through the draft. That takes years and years and years.

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The teams that usually fail the most in football and in sports in general are the ones who try to build instantaneously through crazy amounts of trades and free agency.

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When you’re picking up somebody in free agency in a sport, there’s a team that’s letting that person walk usually, and that’s not a good sign.

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The Dolphins, and you guys know I’m a Miami Dolphin fan. They tend to do everything wrong.

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Over the years. They got Dan Marino right, but everything else they tend to do wrong.

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Two of them might be might be OK, I don’t know yet. But the Steelers, they were like the biggest suckers for Steelers castaways.

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Joey Porter, Mike Wallace, I remember they they would go after these guys, they would trade draft capital for these guys and they would go bust.

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They weren’t worth anything. And I remember back in 95 and a lot of the players I would I could name, you’d be like, who the heck were they?

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But they had a free agency that was one for the books. I mean, they had people like Irving Fryer, they had Terrell Buckley, They had all these really good players that they signed in free agency.

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Steve Entman, former number one pick of the draft. They got all these really good guys in free agency.

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They won the first four games and they completely fell apart the rest of the season. The reason why is they were trying to build a short term pleasure rather than a long term dynasty.

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They were trying to get the short term results by just trying to sign everybody off the streets rather than building something through the draft that might take a lot longer time.

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One of the things that does help, in my opinion at least, build long term happiness is swingtradingthestockmarket.com.

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Yes, this is the plug midway through the podcast that I like to always put in there.

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That’s going to include stock market updates.

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That’s going to include big tech updates. That’s gonna include my daily watch list, a review on the daily watch list.

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Plus you’re also going to get my bullish and bearish master watch list each and every week for a cheap price.

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You can also upgrade to a different package if you want, But that’s that’s like the starter that’s really good.

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It’s swing trading the-stockmarket.com. I think you’ll really like it.

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And in the process, you’re supporting the podcast. So originally going back to the questions that I was asking at the beginning of this podcast, what

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are we satisfying? What are we building towards?

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We’ve talked about flossing, we’ve talked about cheating, we’ve talked about alcohol.

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People are taking drugs purely for short term pleasure, for a short, short term feeling, to escape, to forget about things.

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They’re injecting themselves, they’re smoking things. Why?

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Because of the short term benefits, then long term, I mean, you’re seeing in a lot of major cities where the drugs are just out of control, people are getting messed up.

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But in the moment, it felt good. It felt like a great decision.

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And what comes from short term pleasures is bad habits. Long term happiness generates good habits, but the short term pleasures, you’re feeding bad habits.

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It’s like, for instance, fast food. I like fast food, but the less I eat of it, the less I desire of it.

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The more I eat of it, the more I want it. It’s almost like it gets something in your system where you get the hankering for fast food and then

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all of a sudden I want to eat more of it. The amount of food that I can eat is more, and then I’m starting to put on weight.

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I’m getting fatter. Why?

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Because I’m feeding it and the moment it’s a short term pleasure being able to eat at a fast food restaurant.

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I don’t know what they put in those things, but there’s something about the food that even though it’s total trash, it’s total garbage.

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It feels satisfying in the moment, and if it’s Taco Bell in 30 minutes, you’re gonna be completely regretting life.

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Pretty much the same thing with McDonald’s. Maybe about 35 minutes later, you’ll wake up in the mornings.

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Like, why did I eat that last night? What was I thinking?

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You’re 3 lbs heavier, even though the total weight of the food probably was 2 lbs. You’re 3 lbs heavier somehow.

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And then you start eating more of it and you get bigger and bigger and it’s not good because you’re feeding it.

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It’s like my wife. She’s in the sourdough bread right now.

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She, I love it. I hope this is a trend that doesn’t like go the way of other fads.

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It’s really good. I like it a lot.

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Like a way better than regular bread. She makes it.

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I don’t know how easy it is, but she has to do this thing. She always talks about feeding it.

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You know, she has to feed it with something to keep the thing going or else she loses it. And it’s the same thing.

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If we keep feeding these bad habits, they’re just going to get more and more. And as our trader, are we trying to be systematic about our trades?

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Are we trying to manage the risk? Are we trying to be discipline oriented or are we trying to hit it big?

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Hitting it big will be an incredible pleasure. In the short term.

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It will you, let’s say you take some way out of the money calls and you are spot on, right? You get 1000% return.

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You, you load all your money into the account, 1000% return. Yeah, you just 10X to your account.

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What do you think’s going to happen next? You’re going to do the same thing again.

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And eventually that habit is going to come back and break you. It’s going to destroy you.

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And let’s say you don’t ever do it again. Say that one habit just was a great luck that happened, but you realized it and you’re not gonna ever try to do that again.

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It still was just one thing. Most of those things that benefit you one time won’t change your life forever.

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Now, one bad decision can change your life forever. As a Christian, for instance, faith is very important to me.

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What I believe as a Christian is very important to me.

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And they talk about sins of the flesh versus doing what’s in the best interest of the Spirit, The flesh being temporal, the Spirit being eternal.

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So as a Christian, we’re trying to do the things that’s going to benefit the spirit, not the flesh. And I know I’m giving you a ton of different examples, but what I’m trying to do is try to show you

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that what I’m talking about with short term pleasures and trading versus long terms happiness that results from trading isn’t anything unique.

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It follows across all the spectrums of life from sports, which I love to use illustration with, to faith, to personal hygiene, to personal habits, to what we do and what we eat.

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And what I want traders to think about when they’re making these trades. And sometimes they’re like some of the craziest trades to ask yourself, is this trade that I’m

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taking to serve a short term hope for pleasure? Or is it part of the bigger strategy in my trading that will lend itself to long term happiness

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because one trade is not going to do it for you. Many trades with lots of discipline and focus and risk management can lead to long term happiness.

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I tell my kids all the time, you know, when they don’t want to do something, it’s like, hey, go study for your math test right now.

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You got to, you got to test that later on this week. It’s like, Oh no, I it’s only Monday and the test isn’t till Friday.

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And I said, OK, but what are you going to be thinking on Thursday night when you haven’t studied at all?

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What are you gonna be thinking about yourself from Monday? So, you know, I’ll tell my son Jason.

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I was like, hey, what is Thursday Jason going to say about Monday Jason that didn’t study at all. And then then you’re leaving him to figure things out on Thursday.

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You’re gonna probably be be mad at Monday, Jason, because you realize that you’re all about out of time on Thursday.

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And now Monday Jason left Thursday Jason out to dry. And I do the same thing with myself.

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There’s times where I don’t feel like doing something, whether it’s going through a watch list in preparation for the next day.

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I ask myself, what what’s tomorrow Ryan gonna be thinking about today Ryan that didn’t want to do the watches?

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You’re like, man, why could you just not done that yesterday? And it comes back to at that time today Ryan didn’t really care about long term, Ryan.

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Short term Ryan. Yeah, let’s enjoy the relaxation.

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Let’s not do anything. Let’s castaway responsibility and put it on long term Ryan to figure out that’s not fair.

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That’s people talk about, you know, doing stuff that’s in your best interest. That’s definitely not doing it.

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What’s in your best interests long term, but it is in the short term. And so you take gambling, you take sports.

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The more oriented we are on short term pleasures, the more it’s going to be at the expense of long term happiness.

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So when we approach trading, swing trading, we have to be thinking about all the trades that we’ll ever take and realize that this is just a microcosm.

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This is just one trade in the grand scheme of 10s of thousands of trades probably. So why am I going to do anything stupid that would define the other 9999 trades that I take in a

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lifetime? Because one trade can do that.

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It’s very rare though, that one trade, if you hit it out the park and let’s say you get a two or three 100% return, that it will define you for the rest of your life.

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And if it does, it’s probably going to define you in a very bad way because look at the lottery winners.

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What happens to everybody that wins the lottery? You think, Oh my gosh, if I won $500 million from the Powerball, that would make life so much

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easier. I would have disposable income.

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But what happens? These people all end up broke, they all end up divorced practically, and they are pretty much all

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miserable because buying that lottery ticket, yeah, they hit it big there, but it defined them in all the wrong ways, did not lead to the long term happiness that they thought so in our trading.

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And I’m trying to pound in the idea that as traders we got to make sure that we’re not doing it for short term pleasure.

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So many times people will tell me that I cannot make that much money with a $2000 account swing trading because if I’m right on the trade and I only have $500 on the trade and I make 3%, I only

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made $15.00. That’s nothing.

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That’s not that’s not good. That’s not what we’re doing it for.

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You’re the only thinking in short term pleasures. You got to think in long term happiness.

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So the long term happiness comes from being good at making good trades because eventually you will be trading with more money, especially if you do the right things early on.

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Eventually you’re going to compound that money or you’re going to be adding more money to the account down the road.

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But what we’re trying to do is trying to get the habits that lead to long term happiness. When you’re trading small, you’re learning to trade, but the newbie trader, the person that’s only

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been trading for a few weeks or a few months and they’re trading with like 1000 or $2000 in the account, they’re thinking about the dollars like why would I do this?

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This is stupid. I’m only making three or 4 bucks on the trade, but that’s not why we’re doing it.

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That’s why not why you’re trading right now. You’re not going to get rich trading $2000, but you can become disciplined.

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You can become a good trader so that when you’re trained with more money, it actually shows up on the bottom line.

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If you enjoyed this podcast, I would encourage you to leave a five star review at whatever platform you’re listening to me on.

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I appreciate that. I do read them.

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I value your opinions. I really do.

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Send me your questions ryan@shareplanner.com. The next episode I will be doing an an e-mail and I hope to do many more from you guys.

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As you guys keep having questions. Tell me your stories.

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I want to hear about your background and check out swingtradingthestockmarket.com. Thank you guys and God bless.

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Thanks for listening to my podcast, Swing Trading the Stock Market. I’d like to encourage you to join me in the Share Planner Trading Block where I navigate the stock

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If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at ryan@shareplanner.com. All the best to you and I look forward to trading with you soon.