Nothing is forever. We all know it. Healthy and successful people prepare accordingly while others hope and wish for ideal. Trading preparation for hope is a losing formula.
Seeking pleasure over preparation softens our muscles. It exposes us to danger. We don’t realize it because we’re feeling so good in our hope-driven play world to see reality. We’re too busy seeing what we want to see and hearing what we want to hear instead of observing what is.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t roll out a manicured red carpet. There are ups and downs. Things change. People change. People die. Costs increase. We lose our job. Our neighborhood changes. Freak accidents happen. Our house burns down. The investment we made didn’t work out. Our kid doesn’t get into the favorite school or make the team they tried out for.
The idea of a “forever home” is a fantasy-land concept for television. It makes for a feel-good story when it all works out, but it’s not a viable strategy for everyday life. Again, things change. There are too many variables that conspire against us making one decision and being in one place forever.
As adaptive trend-following traders, we accept and prepare for change. The “Forever Home” concept, similar to “buy and hold” isn’t allowed to enter our minds. It slows down our reaction time. It inhibits us from getting out of that losing trade quickly. It blinds us to new opportunity because “we’ve got all we need”. All we have to do is sit still and we’ll be fine.
Nothing survives by sitting still and hoping for better days ahead. Trend-followers know life and the markets are chaotic and unpredictable. We know we can’t settle in one spot and dig our feet in too deep; that can’t get too attached to any one stock or idea. We have to be ready to move in a moment’s notice.
The only “forever” we know is change.
14 thoughts on “My Forever Home”
Does the trend-following philosophy also extend to residency or citizenship?
I believe so. I believe we can apply it to many areas of life.
I do wonder what questions or issues you have regarding residency and citizenship.
I don’t really have a question as such, just more of a statement. It’s something I’ve been thinking more and more about as I’ve seen the trend-following philosophy apply well in other areas of my life.
My wife and I moved out of a big city (London) with our 3 kids in 2021 to a rural county in England called Norfolk, for a better environment for our kids and good cost of living arbitrage. It’s now very well-established trend and we’ve seen lots of families move here from London doing the same thing.
I can see an equivalence at the country-level, potentially moving, as a trend, to a more life-fulfilling country in the future, or even diversifying citizenship. Perhaps using good preparation, as you say, could keep potential risks of moving small, whilst having asymmetric upside if the move went well.
I live in NYC, so I understand the cost of living arb. We have a 9-month old now.
Why do you classify the rural county as a “better environment” versus the city? There are many families moving out of NYC as well; going as far as moving to different states.
We also have a beach home about two hours from NYC where we keep extra supplies of food and water. I’ve gone as far as purchasing a wind-up radio, walkie-talkie’s, a drone, inflatable boat, flippers and other things like this to help us get out of NYC if we ever needed to.
Like the stop-losses on my trading positions, I hope they don’t get utilized but I must have them just in case.
Congratulations Mike on your little one! Ours are currently 8, 6 and 2.
I’ve been a Londoner for pretty much all my life but we just found London a poor environment for their development. It was too busy and unfriendly, with not enough open space and green areas for them to play, be autonomous, and explore on their own.
I think Norfolk is a ‘better environment’ for us right now but I can imagine what’s ‘best’ will change again in several years time for various reasons.
Thanks, Craig. Damn, you’ve got a full house. I think we might be one and done. I’m an only child and I turned out wonderful so my son can too.
I worry about my son’s focus living in the city too. We’ll see what we do. We’ve got time to feel it out.
I very much enjoyed reading this. My wife sometimes thinks I’m overly prepared. She also sometimes thinks that I am nihilistic, but I like to think of it as being “realistic “!
I believe in preparation too. Like I said above, similar to my stop losses on my trading positions, I hope I don’t have to use them but it pays to have them just in case things go bad.
In March 2020, I remember hearing rumors about NYC getting “shut down”. I didn’t know what this meant, so I told my wife to pack her bags and we were leaving for our second home within an hour. She asked me how long she should pack for? I said, “I don’t know. Three months?” She couldn’t believe I’d suggest three months. That was too far-fetched. Little did we both know that we’d need them for much longer.
Now I didn’t and still don’t agree with lockdowns, but I needed to be prepared for it. How I felt about it didn’t matter. What was happening was all that mattered.
Yeah, the lockdown sucked. The thing that caught me by surprise was the toilet paper shortage! I thought I was prepared for everything with my gold/silver and food supply and fresh water supply etc but no toilet paper! I missed that one lol!
I didn’t think about TP either. I stocked up though.
I bought my wife a stun gun ring too. $20 for 18k volts. Boom.
Actually there could be a forever home. Internally. But think thats almost or harder than trading!
What do you mean by a internal forever home?
Gotta do with self awareness, meditation. Finding peace/strength within yourself ” internally”. we cant control the external environment, would be follish to do so, but we can still find peace within if we train this “internal”. I hope I am making soem sense.
Absolutely. I agree.