Highly influenced by Graham, Dodd, Buffet, Lynch, Kiyosaki, Napoleon Hill, Clausen and many others, I remind myself - on a daily basis - of these three things.

(^image by Quant an Academy)

1. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Confusing those two only leads to heartaches and headaches.

2. There are thousands of reasons to sell an asset, but only one reason to buy: the prospect of future profit.

3. In the end, the amount of profit is more a function of the initial buy price than the subsequent sell price.

Contrarian Investing 

(image by The Winning Zone) 

I'm a Contrarian Investor.

I buy when most are in a selling panic or stupidly funding yet another "Fu€k it, YOLO" adventure.

I have no qualms about taking profits and selling to the FOMO masses.

Contrarian Investing suits my lifestyle just fine.

In 2004, I retired right before my 40th birthday. With no debt, I live comfortably in Asia with my daughters, longtime girlfriend and two dogs.

Contrarian Investing is also congruent with my curious, introspective and fiercely independent demeanor.

When investing, I'm as patient as a motionless, camouflaged Military Sniper.

(image by Business Insider)

I avoid wasting my investment ammunition (Investment Principal) and time on media-hyped $hitcoins.

I ignore FUD, legacy hubris and "The Rumor De Jour" of self-appointed crypto gurus boasting thousands of naive followers.

To the general public, my investment philosophy and trading style appears strange and counterintuitive.

I don't care. It works for me.

How would I describe it?

It's akin to a mad scientist and scholar with the quirky stubbornness of a wise old grandparent.

I play the long ball game; doing months, or sometimes years of researching and probing before making the decision to pull the investment trigger or not.

My father, a kind and highly educated man, taught me the value of boiling down complex systems and multi-player projects all the way to their most basic components (i.e., a First Principles Approach).

He used to say, "If you can't do a solid and convincing, five-second elevator pitch, you really don't know what you're promoting and need to quickly get smarter on it."

"Make Haste, Slowly…"

(image by Nathalie Doucet)

Trading at a snail's pace, I rarely invest in more than two or three new projects per year.

I have no problem waiting for years to see a project grow and flourish before I consider taking profits.

Examples of this are my BTC, ETH, ADA, XLM, XRP, XMR, MIOTA and many more holdings that I bought a LONG TIME ago.

A few times, I was lucky enough to buy directly from the project's support channel way before they got listed on any exchange.

"Plan Your Trade and Trade Your Plan"

(image by Day Trading Forex Live)

Reactionary trading; that is, knee jerk buy/sell activity, rarely leads to significant profit and principal preservation.

Successful Investing requires you to invest in yourself.

If you can't (or won't) commit a lot of time for self-education, you're better off paying someone to manage your portfolio.

Crypto Investing and trading is a marathon, not a sprint.

And with any long-term endeavor, "too much - too soon" and haphazard, overzealous activity can result in multiple injuries (both physical and psychological), a financial apocalypse and a host of demoralizing setbacks which could have easily been prevented.

Alvin Toffler, "The Sniper's Creed
and Segmentation

(image by Wikipedia)

"You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." - Alvin Toffler

Alvin Toffler is one of my favorite futurists (others include: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, P. K. Dick, Ray Kurzweil, Michio Kaku and many more).

[Alvin Toffler is known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on their effects on cultures worldwide.

He is regarded as one of the world's outstanding futurists. - Wikipedia]

Why am I talking about futurists in this article on investment and trading?

Because spotting a megatrend early - before it is recognized, accepted and becomes commonplace - is an invaluable skill.

It gives you as an investor, a huge advantage in the form of research time and investment preparation.

You'll be able to spend more time learning about a prospective investment's tech, business structure, and tokenomics before the others that will follow.

In short, you go at your own pace.

There is no need to become a project pundit "yesterday"'; no forced hyper-learning and no fear that maybe your darling new project, your next 10X Bagger gravy train, has already left the station.

Think of it. Think hard.

You could easily become a much sought after knowledge expert of some killer platform or project (within a nascent, trillion dollar megatrend) before Mr. and Mrs. Joe Public can fathom or even pronounce "Blockchain Interoperability".

You'll confidently enter the market at "early adopter prices"; well before the hordes of "Dumb Money" investors who buy high, sell low and get "rekt".

Now that we have established the enormous advantages of investing with your "Futuristic Glasses" on, let's discuss how "The Sniper's Creed" manifests in my Investment Philosophy.

(image by Inc Magazine)

Here's "The Sniper's Creed":

"Slow is fast and fast is slow. And two is one and one is none."

We've already touched upon the underlying concept of the first sentence "Slow is fast and fast is slow".

This real-life phenomenon is humorously exemplified by another wisdom bomb from my father:

"Many times in life, we can feel overwhelmed by the illusion of urgency and importance of deadlines - no matter how unreasonable those deadlines may be.

And thinking themselves to be smarter than they really are, folks will cut corners and take conveniently expedient measures that any expert would immediately designate as "DBS" (Doomed Before Starting).

The bottom line is this.

Yes, there are situations when you feel there is no time to do an important task; much less, complete it properly.

But think. Think hard.

There's ALWAYS time to do it again, no?" - My Father

Now to the rest of "The Sniper's Creed":0

"And two is one and one is none."

(image by Quote Fancy)

If you don't have at least two of your critical items (e.g., two 7.62 mm, full metal jacket cartridges for a Sniper or two investments within the same market segment) you might as well have none.

Why?

You are pinning your hopes and dreams on just one roll of the dice, one investment or one course of action.

There is no emergency parachute, no spare bullet and no backup plan.

When Murphy's Law rears his ugly head, your lonely little plan becomes toast and the results are utterly FUBAR (Fu€ked-Up Beyond All Recognition).

That's why I always pick at least two projects for each of my desired crypto market segmentations.

It could be Cardano and Cosmos in the "Blockchain Interoperability" segment, AAVE and Compound in the "DeFi" segment or Rarible and OpenSea in the "NFT" segment.

The crux of the matter is that you have at least two contenders in a particular segment that you're betting on.

If one fails, you're still alive and in the game. Besides, the loser may still be a candidate for any other market segment cannibals.

If both win, you can go Lambo shopping.

If both fail and have no tech to peddle at a fire sale, well then you're SOL ($hit Out of Luck).

That's life. Just accept reality without bitterness and force yourself to treasure the lesson learned.

I truly believe that mistakes represent the best opportunities for profound learning.

Deeyaam!

I didn't intend for this short ramble to become a "Sermon on the Mount".

Stopping now.

(Iridium Sat-Phone squawk: "Snowbird. Snowbird. Eskimos are smart now. I say again. Eskimos are smart. Ice Tiger on the move…)

(image by Pinterest)

May you and yours be well and love life today.

In lak'ech, JaiChai.

This is YOUR TORUM INVITATION!

(^images by author)

JaiChai 2-28-2021. Simultaneous multi-site submissions posted. All rights reserved.