Cheat Codes For Risk Taking
You Aren't Taking Enough Risk
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Today’s edition is part of My Stories where I share vulnerable thoughts around my opinions in Finance.
Charts & Chit Chat will be our next edition coming out within a few days where I share Financial Data/Charts alongside quick takeaways that get right to the point.
For now, let’s get vulnerable.
I drank my first beer when I was 9 years old.
Okay, not the whole beer. How much Heineken can a 9 year old boy really drink?
Nonetheless, me and my buddy Brian H would grab a couple beers from the fridge, the bottle opener from the utensil drawer, and shuffle up to the woods in the back of my house to take a few sips and talk 3rd grade business.
He would drink a Mike's Hard Lemonade. That one was a lot easier to get down compared with the Heineken, but my Dad always drank a Heineken at dinner so I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
It wasn't long after that until we also tried puffing down my grandma's Virginia Slim Menthol Ultra Light 120's that she would keep in the garage. I felt like Al Capone even though I had no idea who Al Capone was until I started buying Al Capones from Habibi in the smoke shop a few years later before I even had any peach fuzz above my lip.
Ahh, the good ol days. Those are some of the first risks in my life that I can remember taking.
I've done a lot of stupid shtuff as a kid.
I've jumped off of cliffs into bodies of water that I knew others unfortunately didn't make it out of. I've ridden my bike far away from home as a 9 year old.. to hang out in neighborhoods I had no business being in while my mother thought I was down the street playing video games at a friends house. I've driven friends back home in their cars before I even had my driving permit because they were drunker than I was leaving some random party in the sticks.
These are all some of the first risks I can remember taking in my life. I'm not proud of them, but hey they happened and they helped shape me whether good or bad.
I'm helping my 18 year old nephew move into college this weekend.
My whole family lives in RI and I'm the only person that chose to move to NC about 7 years ago now. Oddly enough, my nephew chose a college in NC and will only be about 1.5 hours away from me by car. I'll be the closest one to him in our family.
That's a risk. That one shocked me a bit too because these kids don't take any risks anymore as far as I can see.
I never remember seeing my nephew riding a bike as a kid. And I for sure know he has never been miles away from home with a snapped bike-chain that he had to walk the whole way back through the city hills. He likes and plays sports, but he also really likes the comfort of his room and his xbox.
So leaving the whole family to move to NC when he hasn't seen much more than a 20 minute radius by car in RI is a decent risk for a kid like him to take.
When I talk to him about what him and his friends are up to it seems pretty relaxed. I'm the cool Uncle and he knows there's no reason to hide anything from me, so I trust he's telling me the truth. Plus he's awkward about it. They don't seem to be drinking, smoking, having sex -- nothing!
I'm not even sure if he's kissed a girl yet but I don't want to embarrass him by pressing the subject too much.
I don't know if they are just more well behaved than my peers seemed to be at their age or if the social media age has anything to do with it...
Back in my day we couldn't just look up a girls Instagram if he wanted to see her swimsuit photos. We actually had to ask them to hang by the community pool or go to the movies if we wanted to see them, and I'm not going to write about what I was up to at the movies with girls by the 6th grade or this newsletter would turn into a 50 Shades Of Grey novel.
Maybe it's just him but I don't think so. He plays sports and has won a few different championships at a great high school. He's somewhat "popular." He goes to parties.
He went to one party recently at some girls house where he told me they made guacamole.
Guacamole!!
Are you kidding me!? I was hoping that was a code word for something. I told him I used to make a lot of guacamole back in the day at highschool parties myself. But it wasn't code. The kid was actually smashing up avocados and mixing it up with onions and cilantro at the party.
Unbelievable.
Every Christmas his own mother (my sister) makes this delicious Sangria that I take down like I used to take down Freezie Pops when I was 9 years old at my friend's grandma's pool.
He doesn't even have a sip. He never rode his bike to his friend's grandma's pool either.
Hey, maybe I just have some issues and I'm the odd one out based on how I grew up. I really don't know, and maybe I sound like a boomer here but it's easy to see some of the generational differences.
Back in my day I seem to remember battling the neighborhoods for who could take the most risk as a kid. We weren't exactly living like the Joneses, but it's not like we lived in a "bad neighborhood" either.
We also grew up with video games and even a little bit of internet. My generation was the first generation to test out internet chatrooms and things like AOL Instant Messenger and Limewire, but none of those things ever took precedence over going outside and messing around.
Not even when we found out we can download dirty videos on Limewire. All hail Pamela Anderson.
The internet was for night time.
I can remember getting up in the summers as a kid, eating a poptart with some milk, and then getting on my bike to roam around the neighborhood doing stupid shtuff with all the other kids until the street lights came on at which point we would race home.
All I needed to do is find 1 or 2 times to call home or my mom's work to check in and lie about where I was going to be in-between then.
I can remember hiding in the bushes to throw snowballs at cars slowing down for the stop sign. I can remember putting cones out in the middle of the road and throwing snowballs at the people who had to get out of their cars to move the cones. I can remember running away from guys in big ass trucks chasing us down and circling the block while we moved swiftly through all the hiding spots we knew around the neighborhood like we were SEAL Team Six.
Thank you to anyone who has ever served, more on them in a bit.
I can remember building bike ramps and trails in the woods, with some ramps being so big I was way too scared to try and jump them, only to see one of my friends come around the corner of the trail full speed to hit the jump and find himself 15 feet in the air like an olympic BMX rider only to land with his back in the dirt while his bike flew another 15 feet further without him before crashing into a tree and busting up his handlebars.
Steve G, you crazy bastard.
Me and him eventually lost touch but I can remember being in my 20's visiting my parents and taking a walk around my old neighborhood one day when someone in a racing motorcycle was popping a wheelie and stopped right next to me and said, "Christos!?"
He took off his helmet and I said, "Steve!?"
That made a lot of sense. This kid is still out here doing stupid shtuff. At least he was wearing a helmet I guess, so he's matured a bit.
As I've grown I've matured a bit too. My risk is getting more calculated.
Maybe not by much in my 20's, but now in my 30's I'm slowing down on the stupid shtuff risk. The most stupid things I do these days is take a girl home I just met 20 minutes ago and trust her when she tells me she's on the pill. I'm slowly starting to understand those risks aren't exactly worth taking anymore either.
I know the generations before me took a lot of risk too, and much more risk than I ever have.
I moved from RI to NC not knowing anybody, but my parents moved from Greece to the US not knowing anybody and not knowing the language. Talk about a risk, and a respected one they can be proud of compared with me drinking a Heineken at 9 years old.
Heck, when they were kids in Greece they were allowed to drink Heinekens at 9 years old!
I've gotten into dozens of fights in the neighborhood, at the bus stop, and at school as a kid, but many members in our community have gotten into dozens of fights during War. I know nothing about War. I know nothing about bootcamp. I know nothing about operating a fighter jet.
That's real risk.
That's real respectable risk. It's no wonder a lot of those folks found their way into taking risks in the market. Market risk is peanuts compared to the risks they have taken in battle.
In any event, many of us who took risks early in our lives typically find ourselves taking risks later in our lives. Maybe you start a business, or learn how to trade, or both!
We typically get better at taking risks too.
Me doing stupid shtuff in the neighborhood transitioned over to me doing stupid shtuff in the markets. I guess that's better, but I've taken way too much stupid risk trading penny stocks, forex, or slanging different futures contracts. Nobody should ever trade natural gas futures.
What the hell was I doing?
Or, I can remember being the sucker buying some stupid NBA TopShot NFT for $10,000 only to sell it 6 months later for $1,000 to another sucker who probably sold it to someone else for $100 shortly after that.
There are better assets to buy and DCA into for the long term.
Stupid shtuff. But you know what, without taking those type of risks throughout life there's a possibility I would have never put myself in a position to take the risks that actually show some reward as proof they were a good idea.
The risk to quit my comfy traditional job that I hated.
The risk to join a 2-man startup and see how big we can take it.
The risk to trade and invest 80% of my net worth on my own with no financial advisor.
Those are some of the biggest risks I ever took or am currently taking that are paying off. However, who knows if I ever would have taken those risks later in life if I never did some of that other stupid shtuff as a kid or in the markets.
It's kind of hard to know what to do during sex if you've never even kissed someone before, just like it's kind of hard to know what to do with 80% of your net worth in Financial Markets if you've never lost a little money before.
There are levels to taking risk, and taking more risk is the only way we can give ourselves a chance at capturing more rewards.
Risk scares most people.
Most people are trying to live risk free. Most people want massive rewards with no risk involved. I wonder how they grew up and what kind of risks they've taken throughout their lives?
What's the first risk you ever remember taking?
You don't want risk? Then put your money in T-Bills and stop wasting time learning about Financial Markets. Go watch Netflix.
If you don't want risk then this endeavor is not for you. There are plenty of other people who have been taking risk their whole lives and will tear you apart in these markets, so maybe you are better off quitting the game and moving on anyways.
That's not me though. I love taking risk, I've been doing it my whole life and I'm not going to stop now. I'm just going to get better at it.
The way to get better at anything is by generating more repetitions. You can't get better at taking risk without taking more risk. You need to take risk to get better at choosing what risks to take.
I'm no longer taking the risks of jumping cliffs or smoking Virginia Slim Menthol Ultra Light 120's, nor am I buying overhyped NFT's on some decentralized blockchain application or slanging natty gas futures.
I'm even slowly learning not to take the risk with the girl who tells me "it's fine I'm on the pill" on the first night too. That one's a bit like shorting the market though, it's tough to give up.
But I've lost enough money and had enough scares at this point.
Fortunately, I've been able to take a lot of risk in different ways early in my life starting from age 9 that I can remember. I've been a slow learner along the way but it's all good. Slow progress is still progress.
For some of you maybe you are just starting to take risk in your lives as you start learning more about Financial Markets. I think my nephew just took the first risk of his life by choosing to leave his family and go to school 800 miles away.
That's okay -- in fact that's great!
It's never too late to start taking risks and it's never too early to try. Don't be afraid to look back and realize you took a dumb risk, because that dumb risk is going to make you better in the long run.
Risk makes life worth living. Can it be dangerous? Absolutely. But so is living a life where you don't reach your full potential. Not only is that dangerous, it's a damn waste.
Step out of your comfort zone.
You only realize you did a lot of stupid shtuff when you have some more time and experience to look back at it from. In the moment it's just you figuring it out like a kid learning the ropes no matter how old you are.
Take some chances and see what sticks.
That kid in you eventually grows up with more experience, and you realize that your rewards in life were only possible because of all the risks and stupid shtuff you did along the way.
Embrace risk. Learn from risk. You will reap the rewards of the risks you took later on down the line regardless of how some of those early risks played out along the way.
They were just the warm up. Don't let risk scare you.
Living with fear stops us from taking risks, and if you don't go out on the branch you're never going to get the best fruit.
On that note, time to go pick up some gatorades and rubbers for my little nephew moving into college. I told you I've matured, and his time is just getting started!
That lucky bastard.
I hope you enjoyed reading Simply Finance. Please share this edition of My Stories with anyone that you think would benefit.
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Disclaimer: These are not recommendations and I am not a financial advisor. These are just my two cents, or two satoshis as the kids say. Remember to do your own homework before making any financial decisions. Also, keep in mind I usually have some personal investments in the things I discuss.
Life✔️
I bet your nephew will have similar stories to tell. He is taking different sorts of risks now. But I totally agree that what is acceptable risk today is much tamer than it used to be in our days or the generations before us