From Prophet to Profane in Pursuit of Profit.

When you stare at a stock chart, it’s a beautiful landscape of pure, logical opportunity. You see the valleys and the peaks with the clarity of a prophet. The mantra is simple: buy low, sell high. It seems so obvious …

So, you take the plunge. You buy the dip. You acquire shares at what the chart clearly indicates is a bargain-bin price. And in that moment, you are not just a person; you are a prodigy, a financial oracle, a master of the universe. You genuinely believe you’ve just bought a first-class ticket to the Kingdom of Easy Gold. You lean back, titing for the start, convinced the market has just been waiting for your royal entry to begin its moonward ascent.

If you’re lucky, the stock might blip up half a percent. This tiny flicker is all the validation your ego needs. It confirms your genius, your meticulous foresight, your almost supernatural shrewdness.

But then, reality hits. It always does. Immediately after your purchase, the stock will fall. It doesn't matter if it’s a minor dip of half a percent or a full-blown correction of 20 or 30 percent. In that instant, your self-image shatters. You go from being a virtuoso to a village idiot.

You begin to check the ticker every day, no, every hour, no, every five minutes. You refresh your screen obsessively, praying for the price to just crawl back to what you paid for it. You feel like a buffoon, a chump who fell for the oldest trick in the book.

Eventually, you forget about it. You accept your fate as a bag holder. And that’s precisely when the stock wakes up. It starts to climb. When it finally reaches the promised land of your take-profit order, you puff up again (When it finally reaches your exit strategy price, you puff up again; When it finally climbs to your long-imagined profit goal, you puff up again).You’re a genius once more! But it doesn't stop there. It goes up 10%... 20%... 30% past your target. Suddenly, your genius feels like stupidity. You’re not a visionary; you’re a rube who sold way too early.
But now you have cash in hand ( But now you're sitting on dry powder;
But at least you're sitting on a pile of cash now).

Fine. Next time, you see a stock you like. It looks cheap, but you've been duped before (you've been fooled before; you've been played for a sucker before). You've learned your lesson the hard way. You wait, wanting to be clever, to be prudent. You wait for it to get just a little cheaper, to give you an even better entry. But instead of falling, it takes off like a rocket. You watch it climb without you. You feel like a dunce, a simpleton who overthought.

Other times, you buy something that just collapses. It’s a long, slow grind into the red. You wait for years, a stoic fool, just hoping to break even. Finally, you get your chance. You sell right at your cost basis, thanking your lucky stars to be out. The stock then quadruples without you. You feel like the biggest donkey to ever walk the financial markets.

Or, consider this: You hold a losing stock forever. One day, it briefly touches your purchase price for a fleeting second. You remember the pain and decide to hold on for a real profit. It then plummets, never to see those heights again. You are, once again, a nincompoop.

And let's not forget the classic: you buy a stock and it immediately skyrockets. Your friends are high-fiving you. But you’re miserable. Why? Because you only bought a paltry number of shares. You feel like a complete jackass for being so timid.

But wait — here's another classic. Sometimes the stock actually goes up. And up. You're in profit! But you don't sell. Oh no, you're not fool. You're a visionary, remember? This thing is going to the moon! So you hold, watching your gains swell with a smug grin. Then, without warning, it turns. It starts to drift down. You tell yourself it's just a pullback. It falls more. Eventually, it lands right back at your purchase price — or lower. You had profits. Real, actual profits. And you did nothing.
You're not just a moron; you're a moron who watched his stock triple in value, did absolutely nothing.(You're not just a moron; you're the kind of moron who finds a golden goose, waits for it to lay an egg the size of a house, and then watches it fly away because you were too busy calculating how many houses you'd buy).

The market has a cruel sense of humor: it gives you exactly what you want, just not when you want it. Buy the dip? Idiot. Buy early? Idiot. Buy late (Waiting for a better entry)? Idiot. Sell too soon? Idiot. Hold too long? Idiot, who missed the exit. Take profits? Idiot who left money on the table. Let them run? Idiot who watched them evaporate.

So go ahead, trade the markets
if you want to feel like an idiot, buy a stock.
The stock market is the only place where every strategy ends with you feeling like a fool. But hey, fools are lucky, right? Trade well, fool.

So go ahead, buy, sell, hold, or run. The only way to not feel like an idiot at this carnival is to never look at the chart in the first place. But then you're just an idiot who missed the party. Your choice.