Walking Away
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance
In a recent conversation with Adam Taggart on Thoughtful Money, I discussed something that has been years in the making: my decision to step away from active trading and refocus on what I believe is my real edge: analyzing markets, identifying themes, and communicating ideas to you guys…the subscribers I am eternally grateful to have reading me on a regular basis.
For people who have followed my work over the years, this may sound counterintuitive. After all, I’ve spent decades immersed in markets, uncovering frauds doing research on the short side for a decade, publishing contrarian research, and obsessing over macroeconomic trends viewed through an Austrian lens.
But, as I wrote in my recent piece talking about why I stopped active trading, one of the hardest lessons markets have taught me is that being right and making money are often two entirely different things.
As I told Adam:
“Objective truth and market outcomes are two completely different things. You can be fundamentally correct and still lose money.”
That realization ultimately led me to a difficult but liberating conclusion: I am far better at generating ideas (did I mention the blog’s 26 Stocks I’m Watching For 2026 are beating the S&P 500 by more than 10% this year?) than I am at actively trading them.
About a year ago, I tried with limited success to just stop trading options. More recently, I’ve begun backing away from trading entirely. Not because I suddenly lost confidence in my analysis, but because I finally became honest with myself about my execution. The more I traded, the worse I performed.
I could identify the trend correctly and still botch the timing. I could have the right thesis and sell too early. I could spot a long-term opportunity and sabotage it through overtrading. As I said during the interview:
“So many times I’ve had the right idea and the wrong execution. At some point that simply becomes exhausting.”
For me, this became an exercise in trying to drop my ego. Having spent years working on the short side, uncovering frauds and publishing research that contributed to investigations, delistings, and indictments, it’s easy to develop an ego around being “right.”
But then, markets don’t reward correctness. They reward execution. And sometimes the smartest thing you can do is admit that your strengths lie elsewhere.
Today, I derive far more satisfaction from researching ideas, understanding macro trends, and helping readers think through complex situations than I do from trying to squeeze another trade out of the market.
And part of what pushed me toward this decision is the realization that modern markets increasingly resemble something very different from investing. During the interview, I described today’s market as a “digital casino on cocaine” and in my recent novella, I talked about how online sports gambling and prediction markets are outright frightening to me.
Between zero-day options, prediction markets, sports betting, crypto leverage, and 24/7 trading, we’ve created an ecosystem where...(WATCH THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW 100% FREE HERE).